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Unable to restore session

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I keep a lot of tabs open, and it's not that unusual to lose my session altogether and have to restore it. This time, though, it's not letting me.

A "Restore Session" tab came up that said the following:

"Sorry. We’re having trouble getting your pages back.

We are having trouble restoring your last browsing session. Select Restore Session to try again.

Still not able to restore your session? Sometimes a tab is causing the issue. View previous tabs, remove the checkmark from the tabs you don’t need to recover, and then restore."

I usually attempt to restore from the "History" dropdown menu at the top of the screen, and it usually works on the first try. But even when it doesn't, this screen appears and gives me the option of clicking on the bright blue "Restore Session" button, and that typically does it. This time, though, the blue "Restore Session" button is much more muted in color and not responsive to clicks.

Do you have any ideas? Like I say, I keep a LOT of tabs open, and most of them serve as reminders to take care of something or other, so I really need to reopen all tabs from that previous session so I don't lose those reminders. Thanks!

RM

I keep a lot of tabs open, and it's not that unusual to lose my session altogether and have to restore it. This time, though, it's not letting me. A "Restore Session" tab came up that said the following: "Sorry. We’re having trouble getting your pages back. We are having trouble restoring your last browsing session. Select Restore Session to try again. Still not able to restore your session? Sometimes a tab is causing the issue. View previous tabs, remove the checkmark from the tabs you don’t need to recover, and then restore." I usually attempt to restore from the "History" dropdown menu at the top of the screen, and it usually works on the first try. But even when it doesn't, this screen appears and gives me the option of clicking on the bright blue "Restore Session" button, and that typically does it. This time, though, the blue "Restore Session" button is much more muted in color and not responsive to clicks. Do you have any ideas? Like I say, I keep a LOT of tabs open, and most of them serve as reminders to take care of something or other, so I really need to reopen all tabs from that previous session so I don't lose those reminders. Thanks! RM

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Backup the session files in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox profile folder to make sure not to lose possible important session data. Do NOT close Firefox when Firefox is already running.

You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).

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 with Firefox closed.

  • make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4

You can try to inspect/restore a recent upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> when available or if you use the Time Machine see if you can find a recent sessionstore.jsonlz4 file.

You can look at this tool to inspect a compressed jsonlz4 sessionstore file. This tool works locally, no uploading done.