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How to restore previously synced tabs

ilya.v.chernov
ilya.v.chernov
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Hello. Today my Firefox browser (Version 68.0.2 (64-bit), Win 10) stopped displaying all pages. The loading spinner was rotating indefinitely, and nothing happened. Safe mode did work. So I turned off the only plugin I had, but it didn't help. I uninstalled all the dictionaries, plugins, extensions, themes, everything. Restarted pc, restarted ff, to no avail. The problem persisted.

Everything worked in safe-mode, but not in the default one.

So I backed up all my bookmarks and decided to uninstall ff. But before that I made sure that I'm signed in to FF Sync, and the tabs are synced (there is a checkbox "Open tabs" which was checked and is checked now).

After reinstalling Firefox I found out that the folder called "Old Firefox Data" appeared. I still have it. I signed in to sync and found zero tabs there. None. All the bookmarks are in place, the history is there, but no tabs.

Could you please help me restore the tabs?

Copypasting "Old Firefox Data" into the "Local Directory" (from about:profiles) didn't help.

What is the point of syncing my open tabs if they are wiped out exactly when I need them? It is difficult to imagine a worse case of UX failure.

Hello. Today my Firefox browser (Version 68.0.2 (64-bit), Win 10) stopped displaying all pages. The loading spinner was rotating indefinitely, and nothing happened. Safe mode did work. So I turned off the only plugin I had, but it didn't help. I uninstalled all the dictionaries, plugins, extensions, themes, everything. Restarted pc, restarted ff, to no avail. The problem persisted. Everything worked in safe-mode, but not in the default one. So I backed up all my bookmarks and decided to uninstall ff. But before that I made sure that I'm signed in to FF Sync, and the tabs are synced (there is a checkbox "Open tabs" which was checked and is checked now). After reinstalling Firefox I found out that the folder called "Old Firefox Data" appeared. I still have it. I signed in to sync and found zero tabs there. None. All the bookmarks are in place, the history is there, but no tabs. Could you please help me restore the tabs? Copypasting "Old Firefox Data" into the "Local Directory" (from about:profiles) didn't help. What is the point of syncing my open tabs if they are wiped out exactly when I need them? It is difficult to imagine a worse case of UX failure.

All Replies (3)

ilya.v.chernov
ilya.v.chernov Question owner
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This awesome discussion helped me. I was copying backup files into local profile directory, instead I should copy them to the profile's root directory.

Thanks a lot!

Modified by ilya.v.chernov

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You should have created a backup of the root profile location. The local directory stores volatile temporary data like the disk cache and is of no use. Your personal data is stored in the main profile folder in "AppData\Roaming".

You can check the sessionstore-backups folder and possibly sessionstore.jsonlz4 in the profile folder in the "Old Firefox Data" folder on the desktop.

See also:

You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:

  • previous.jsonlz4 (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.jsonlz4 from previous session that was loaded successfully)
  • recovery.jsonlz4 (latest version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
  • recovery.baklz4 (previous version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
  • upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.jsonlz4 to replace the current file (make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4).

ilya.v.chernov
ilya.v.chernov Question owner
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Yeah, I did almost this, except I copied the sessionstore.jsonlz4 and replaced the useless-current-one with the one from the "old data" folder, and this worked. Thank you for your reply!