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Why did the refresh delete all of my tabs?

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Pop up came up said Firefox is running slowly, try refresh. All my tabs were gone afterwards. Can't even restore previous session.

Pop up came up said Firefox is running slowly, try refresh. All my tabs were gone afterwards. Can't even restore previous session.

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Assuming you were in a regular session and not a private session, Firefox should have kept your session history file.

I'm going to ask you to look for one or two files inside the Old Firefox Data folder on your desktop. When you click into Old Firefox Data, you may see one, or more than one, semi-randonly named folders. If there's only one, most likely that's from this Refresh. Go ahead and open it. If there are others, you'll need to look at the last modified dates on some of their contents to find the most recent.

Note: By default, Windows hides the .js extension. To ensure that you are looking at the files I mention, you may want to turn off that feature. This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions

Here's what I'd like you to look for:

(1) A file named sessionstore.js -- when Firefox shuts down normally, it creates this file.

If you find a sessionstore.js file and its date/time stamp matches the time you want to go back to, you can right-click > Copy it and then on your desktop, right-click > Paste. This way we don't remove the original just in case this doesn't go well the first time.

If you do not find sessionstore.js, then:

(2) Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder and look for a file named recovery.js

If you find a recovery.js file and its date/time stamp matches the time you want to go back to, you can right-click > Copy it and then on your desktop, right-click > Paste. This way we don't remove the original just in case this doesn't go well the first time.

Hopefully you found one of those files. Now we'll switch it into your current settings folder in place of the useless one:

(3) Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

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

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

(4) Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
  • (menu bar) File > Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then the new sessionstore.js should appear. Rename this sessionstore.js to something like sessionstore.old, or if you don't care about this latest session, you can delete it.

(5) Copy the sessionstore.js file from your desktop to the current profile folder. If you are using recovery.js, after copying it to the current profile folder, rename it to sessionstore.js

(6) Start Firefox back up again and, if necessary, use History > Restore Previous Session

Success?

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See also;


There are other things that need attention.

Note that your System Details List shows multiple Flash plugins.

  1. Shockwave Flash 11.8 r800
  2. Shockwave Flash 18.0 r0

You can find the installation path of all plugins on the about:plugins page.

You can check the Flash player installation folder for multiple Flash player plugins and remove older version(s) of the plugin (NPSWF32) and possibly (re)install the latest Flash player.

  • (32 bit Windows) C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\
  • (64 bit Windows) C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\

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