You may have destroyed your bookmarks! Did you use any option from Firefox or Windows saying something along the lines of delete personal settings ?

Firefox will normally try to retain your bookmarks, including some backups, and other settings including passwords, unless you instruct it to do otherwise.

If you have manually backed up your bookmarks using the Firefox Bookmarks Library option and kept that bookmarks file somewhere safe, (not within firefox paths) you are ok and may re-import those, BUT TAKE CARE back up your current bookmarks before proceeding any further. In fact it is best to backup your whole Firefox profile including all sub files and folders; that preserves any information you still have.

• see also
  • backing up and restoring bookmarks
  • backing up your information
  • lost bookmarks

What exactly are the bookmarks files that you have retained, and how did you create those ?

Do you have any other backups, for instance hdd disk images, or other automated backups of important data files that may conceivably include the previous Firefox profile files ?

i have the book marks. when i open explorer i can find them in a number of places. but i don't know how or where fire fox places them in the fire fox folders? if i know how fire fox looks for them i will copy them into that area and even if fire fox finds them and puts them in one big folder i can move them to my preference. thanks.

thanks i got them back. i just had to copy them from one of the favorites folders into my favorites in another location i opened up explorer and created a folder with my name and date so i could find it then i copied my favorites into that area and imported them back to fire fox. i then just moved them around to my taste. thanks

Maybe you should note that Firefox and IE use different systems for bookmarks/favourites.

I am not entirely sure what you mean by

. i then just moved them around to my taste.

Presumably instead of making use of Firefox bookmarks library and its extensive features you are merely relying on folders of HTML files.

• see how do i use bookmarks? includes links to further info

Firefox uses as a working database the file places.sqlite that is kept in the Firefox profile this includes your History records and is

• not directly compatible with IE HTML format favorite files
  • but Firefox Bookmarks Library has the option to import and export as HTML.
    (Imported HTML are appended to the library)
• Backedup automatically to Firefox bookmarks files in .JSON format
• Backed up manually by following the procedures in
  • ( CARE if you import firefox .json bookmarks it overwrites the existing set, always backup first manually )
  • backing up and restoring bookmarks