Hello, to recover the tabs and windows that you had open in a previous session through the Firefox menu: 1. On the right side of the toolbar, click the menu button. 2. Select Restore previous session For more information go to the following link: Restore previous session - Configure when Firefox shows your most recent tabs and windows

Hi Gwynne, do you recall your Firefox mentioning either of these:

(A) Your Firefox needs a tune-up -- this is an invitation to perform a Refresh and assuming it runs properly, your old data is moved to your Windows desktop inside an Old Firefox Data folder

Do you have a folder like that with updated files inside?

(B) Firefox can't use your profile and needs to create a new one -- this can occur if Firefox downgrades or there is some version discrepancy which prevents Firefox from using your normal profile folder

Also, let me give you that generic suggestion -- I realize it's a cliche -- to do a normal shutdown and restart of Windows. The reason is to release file locks, complete any pending updates, and hopefully resolve any transient permission issues.

Finally, you can back up Firefox's session history files -- something you might have found in another thread, but I'll repeat it anyway.

(1) To open your profile folder...

You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, find the Profile Folder row and click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch Windows' File Explorer listing the contents of your current profile folder.

(2) Copy out session history files

In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.

(3) What files did you find?

The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:

• recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
• recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
• previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
• upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update

Sometimes you can tell from the last modification time which one will have your missing tabs, but not always.

Optional File Contents Preview

These compressed files are a pain to view, so I created a tool on my website to list out their contents. If you want to try that, you can drag and drop it onto the large box on the following page, then click the "Scrounge URLs" button:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

If you don't get a list within 15 seconds, that probably means the script is caught in a loop. You may need to close the tab to avoid a tab crash and then try again in a new tab.

If you get a useful list, use the "Save List" button to archive it as a web page of clickable links for future reference, in case no other approach is successful.