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I can't get rid of URL history in my address bar. Can I delete moz_hosts to get rid of all those URL's I don't want in my history or on my computer?

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  • Last reply by Dsmith01

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When I put a letter in my address bar, any letter, I get "suggestions" of URL's which I haven't gone to in ages, which I don't want to go to, and I don't want the URL's in my history, or on my computer. Will completely deleting moz_hosts or moz_places and start fresh get rid of the problem? I assume that FF will recreate the files, empty. I currently have over 3000 URL's in moz_hosts!! Most of which I don't want! A lot I don't even know what they are. Some are nothing but IP addresses. I don't mind starting fresh with this as I never use the address bar history anyway. Any URL's that I frequent, I'll have in my bookmarks. Please understand, I not only want them out of FF, I want them out of my computer completely!! If I do want to go back to a web site, I can manually type in the url. I don't need the history. Running "Clear Recent History" does nothing, except clear the current session. What would Reseting FireFox do? Would I still have all my bookmarks and add-on's if I did that? Would that reset _hosts and _places?

When I put a letter in my address bar, any letter, I get "suggestions" of URL's which I haven't gone to in ages, which I don't want to go to, and I don't want the URL's in my history, or on my computer. Will completely deleting moz_hosts or moz_places and start fresh get rid of the problem? I assume that FF will recreate the files, empty. I currently have over 3000 URL's in moz_hosts!! Most of which I don't want! A lot I don't even know what they are. Some are nothing but IP addresses. I don't mind starting fresh with this as I never use the address bar history anyway. Any URL's that I frequent, I'll have in my bookmarks. Please understand, I not only want them out of FF, I want them out of my computer completely!! If I do want to go back to a web site, I can manually type in the url. I don't need the history. Running "Clear Recent History" does nothing, except clear the current session. What would Reseting FireFox do? Would I still have all my bookmarks and add-on's if I did that? Would that reset _hosts and _places?

All Replies (2)

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It is best not to mess with tables in places.sqlite, but delete the file to start with a fresh places.sqlite file.

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I think I have a solution. First, download the add-on SQManager. This should be included with FireFox, it is really good. Look for the file moz_hosts in the folder places.sqlite. Don't delete the file, just delete the information in the file. My file has over 3600 websites, which go back years!! I did not know they were there, but I was frustrated about not being able to get rid of them. They popped up every time I used the address bar. Clearing my history would not get rid of them. This is where they are stored!! I found that by deleting the pesky web site from moz_hosts, it does not appear in my address bar anymore!!! I think that if I just delete all the websites in moz_hosts.... Wa-la...History Gone!!! As long as you don't delete the file, just empty it, FireFox won't know the difference. It will just keep adding websites to it until you empty it again. Why running "clear recent history" doesn't do this, I don't know. You are doing manually what "clear recent history" is not doing. Please tell me if you see any flaw in this. I think it's the solution we've all been looking for!