Search Protect removed all my tabs and groups from Firefox
I had approximately 200 tabs grouped in approximately 30 groups in Firefox 31.0 (latest version). The grouping showed up when I clicked the icon on the left of the "minimize" button or pressed CTRL+SHIFT+E. It is called "Firefox - Group Your Tabs". I also use Xmarks, but I turned off tab synchronization recently.
Usually all the tabs and their groups were saved when I closed Firefox. Today I opened Firefox and all the tabs and groups were gone! Instead there opens some search engine called Trovi (www.trovi.com) with "Results by bing". Its the same in Chrome, Opera and IE.
My OS is Windows 8.1 Update 1 with all updates installed. My antivirus is Avast! with all updates installed. There must have been some malware installed obviously, but I didnt get any alert. I have run a "Complete system test" in Avast! with latest updates, which is the most in-depth scan I know (without restaring my laptop HP ProBook 4730s). No virus has been found.
I am suspecting a program called "Search Protect" version 2.16.10.61 from "Client Connect LTD". It has been installed along with PowerISO 6.0 x64.
I tried to run System Restore, but it seems all the restore points I have ever created are deleted now! I discovered this by opening System Properties -> System Protection -> System Restore. However "Protection" is "On" for my system drive.
How can I restore my tabs and groups? It is extremely important to me.
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Hello,
To find the correct solution to your problem, we need some more non-personal information from you. Please do the following:
- Use ONE of these methods to open the Firefox Troubleshooting Information page:
- Click the menu button
, click on help 
and select Troubleshooting Information.
- Type about:support into the Firefox address bar and press the enter key.
- Click the menu button
- At the top of the Troubleshooting Information page that comes up, you should see a button that says "Copy text to clipboard". Click it.
- Now, go back to your forum post, right-click in the reply box and select Paste from the context menu (or else click inside the reply box and press the Ctrl+V keys) to paste all the information you copied into the forum post.
If you need further information about the Troubleshooting information page, please read the article Use the Troubleshooting Information page to help fix Firefox issues.
Thanks in advance for your help!
The post would exceed 10000 characters. Here are the links.
PDF https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5y_o6yDHrmNN1c5OWFFZkVHdFE/edit?usp=sharing
DOCX https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5y_o6yDHrmNdGEzNEh2UkZnYzQ/edit?usp=sharing
PASTEBIN http://pastebin.com/PXgc8Baa
I dont really care about remowing Trovi. Thats a piece of cake. I need to recover my tabs and groups!
You can only restore the tab groups via a (backup) copy of the sessionstore.js file.
I can not open the first link, but thanks. I will try your idea tonight.
I cant use File History, because it has never been turned on nor is it possible to turn it on (probably because I have SSD). I have found a file called "sessionstore.bak-20140716183446" in C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\utdnb7pi.default and I think it contains all the tabs and groups. I tried to rename it to "sessionstore.js", but firefox opens only the homepage. Any ideas?
Do not exit Firefox!
Can you try using either:
- "3-bar" menu button > History > Restore Previous Session
- (menu bar) History > Restore Previous Session
A sessionstore file with a time stamp is created automatically when you update Firefox In this case the update happened on July 16.
Do you have an "History > Restore Previous Session" item to restore this session from the sessionstore.bak file?
Wow it worked! At least partially. So I have restored most of the tabs and groups. I wonder what can I do with the sessionstore.js that I recovered using Recuva (State:Excellent, Comment:No overwritten clusters detected.). Its contents is rather strange! I tried to just copy it but ony a home page opens. I tried to rename it to sessionstore.bak, but I cant click on "Restore Previous Session". Is there anything I can do with it?
If you can restore a file then this doesn't mean that you have the original content. It is always possible that some of the clusters have been used in the meantime and thus have lost their original data and the file is thus corrupted. The sessionstore.js file is a text file and should only have ASCII text and no other binary content.
You can open the file in the Scratchpad (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). Click the "Pretty Print" button to format the file for readability.
Never mind the sessionstore.sk, its corrupted. How can I restore tabs I synchronized a few days ago with Xmarks? Anyways, is the "Group Your Tabs" part of the Firefox core or is it an extension/plugin/addon? Because I am looking for sth similar for Chrome. I think this is the most useful feature ever made by human (after tabs).
I didn't realize Xmarks saved tabs. There may be a better site for Xmarks support than this one.
Tab groups are a built-in feature.
Since you are depending a lot on session history, which is somewhat fragile, you might consider using the Session Manager extension, which can save more sessions than just the last one, and also make backups outside of your Firefox settings folder. (Note: I don't use it myself.)
You can consider to copy the sessionstore.js file from the other computer to a profile on your current computer to have access to the web pages that show on them.
Thanks for the Session Manager, I will definitely use it. And Xmarks. And Linux. And antivirus on Linux. And Backups. And bookmarks. Hope that will suffice.
I managed to recover even more tabs with Xmarks so I consider the whole operation a success (not complete, but sufficient).
Anyways, does somebody know something like "Group Your Tabs" for Chrome? I have seen many extension for tab management in Chrome and they are horrible!
There must be a good community site for Chrome users somewhere...
You also could try Google's support forums, since some of the regulars there may know about extensions: