Also, here is some screenshots I took of the problem

1. Session Restore at Startup

2. Session Restore after being entered manually in the Address Bar

In case you are using "Clear history when Firefox closes" then try to disable this feature

• Options > Privacy > Firefox will: "Use custom settings for history": [X] "Clear history when Firefox closes" > Settings

Also check for issues with closing Firefox:

• "Hang at exit": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs
• "Firefox hangs when you quit it": https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+hangs

The crash report could be an issue with hardware acceleration.

You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox (you need to close and restart Firefox).

• Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration

See also:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+crashes

Thanks cor-el.

Definitely not an issue with my Privacy Settings as I have it set to remember my previous History & Downloads whilst clearing everything else; i.e. I can easily go into my history and load each tab individually from there but not use Session Restore to reload them in one go.

As for Hardware Acceleartion I'll try running with that off to see if it improve overall perfomance.

You re now on Fx29.0.1, at least there may have been an explanation for a problem on the original Fx29.0 There was a known bug but it should have been fixed.

• /questions/999842#answer-573253
• Whilst Firefox is closed does manually renaming sessionstore.bak to sessionstore.js help as a potential workaround ?
  CARE if you have a functioning sessionsrore.js that you are using make sure to copy that if you wish to use it again.

Now on Firefox 30 and, despite apparently fixing a bug in Firefox 29.0.1 with a corrupted sessionstore.js, I'm still getting a blank page after crashes where a session restore is required.

Tried john99's solution but it didn't work.

Seeing as Firefox generates the sessionstore.js and .bak files I've deleted these and will let Firefox regenerate them to see if this helps. If not, it's off to Bugzilla for a bug report. Speaking of which, here is the latest Crash Report: 7f6a3385-bc82-4cf1-aa52-340e42140614

You have scores of addons have you tried in Firefox's safe mode and with all your plugins disabled. If you are getting repeated crashes although that should generate sessionstore files it could conceivably also interfere with the process.

If you get crashes in Firefox whilst in safe mode and with all plugins disabled please paste in 2or 3 more Crash report IDs, noting that the submitted report start with bp-

• Reports for your Crash IDs
  1. bp-75492a6a-ff78-4388-9d97-e2c222140513
  2. bp-7f6a3385-bc82-4cf1-aa52-340e42140614 NOT FOUND
• Crash Signature:
  1. mozilla::dom::CanvasRenderingContext2D::CurrentState()
  2.  ? There was no leading bp- was that actually submitted ?

Related to GarbageCollection: bp-7f6a3385-bc82-4cf1-aa52-340e42140614 Firefox 30.0 Crash Report [@ js::jit::ToggleBarriers(JS::Zone*, bool) ]

Here's another head scratcher:

As a workaround, Session Manager can be used in a similar fashion to about:sessionrestore. When the blank Session Restore page is shown, you can use the "Backup Sesssions" of Session Manager (if enabled) to restore your crashed sessions; it stores these in its own files so it doesn't matter if sessionstore.js gets cleared or not.

However, here's the weird part.

I had a full system crash recently so Firefox attempted to use about:sessionrestore. Before attempting to restore a session I remembered there was an add-on I wanted to disable so I opened the Add-ons Manager, disabled it then restarted Firefox When it restarted, it immediately opened the Add-ons Manager (being the last tab I was on) and still showed the "about:sessionrestore tab". Clicking on this tab caused it to refresh and, lo and behold, the page loaded properly and allowed me to restore my session.

Now that I think about it, Session Manager is set to open a set of App Tabs at launched but it never seems to properly load the tab I was last one properly, showing a blank page in a similar fashion to the about:sessionrestore page. Gonna try setting Firefox to load my default home page and see if about:sessionrestore works after a crash with this setup.

Obviously all the addons could interfere with Firefox's processes, and interact with one another especially the Session Manager addon

Solved!! I'm so surprised that I fixed this just now because I'm quite tech-unsavvy. Here's what I did: The first tab open was still Session Restore showing a blank page. Then in researching the problem I had opened several other Tabs (I'm doubting that the content of the tab matters, but just in case, one of was this page and another was Add-Ons Manager). These new tabs of course were appearing to the right of the blank tab. Since the new ones to the right were showing up just fine, I thought I would try sliding the blank session restore tab over to the right in the sequence of open tabs to see if that could possibly make a difference. When I did and clicked on the Session Restore tab again, it was there again in all of it's "this is embarrassing" glory! Happy Days. Glad my rudimentary tech brain could offer something useful to others for once!  : )

One additional note--when I clicked Session Restore in its new position, it opened a new session--not sure if that would be expected or not.