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Random existing tabs on FFv29 restart show windows days & weeks old rather than last opened, why?

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  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Since upgrade to FF 29.01 random existing tabs will open to pages days and weeks old even if those specific site-pages have been cleared from the history.

Forex, a ZDNet Six Clicks article continued to appear -- with its outmoded Page-back history -- two weeks after I had finished the article and had returned to the ZDNet Home page and loaded more current articles. I cleared the history of all Six Click articles and the tab **still* reloaded to the Six Click while wiping out the string of ZDNet articles I had been in the middle of reading insteading.

The same thing occurred with a series of Google searches I was using for my writing research over the last three days that was replaced with a Google Map pertinent to my niece's visit Thursday morning. My work has grounded to a halt because the Tab problem is eradicating all recent History in the Tab-path that I am accustomed to using for the past several years.

JJB

Since upgrade to FF 29.01 random existing tabs will open to pages days and weeks old even if those specific site-pages have been cleared from the history. Forex, a ZDNet Six Clicks article continued to appear -- with its outmoded Page-back history -- two weeks after I had finished the article and had returned to the ZDNet Home page and loaded more current articles. I cleared the history of all Six Click articles and the tab **still* reloaded to the Six Click while wiping out the string of ZDNet articles I had been in the middle of reading insteading. The same thing occurred with a series of Google searches I was using for my writing research over the last three days that was replaced with a Google Map pertinent to my niece's visit Thursday morning. My work has grounded to a halt because the Tab problem is eradicating all recent History in the Tab-path that I am accustomed to using for the past several years. JJB

Chosen solution

Did you check for numbered sessionstore files in your profile folder to see whether there might be a file with a more recent tab history?

I suggest backing up all files whose names start with sessionstore to a safe place (e.g., Documents folder) in case you need to mine them for history later.

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All Replies (9)

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Hello,

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information.
Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions and some Preferences.

  • Open websites will not be saved in Firefox versions lower than 25.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

For Firefox versions previous to 29.0:

  1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
  2. Click the "Reset Firefox"Button reset button.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

For Firefox 29.0 and above:

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu, click help Help-29 and select Troubleshooting Information.

Now, a new tab containing your troubleshooting information should open.

  1. At the top right corner of the page, you should see a button that says "Reset Firefox"Button reset. Click on it.
  2. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  3. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

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You can check for problems with the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files in the Firefox profile folder that store session data.

Rename (or delete) the #sjs and sessionstore.bak# files and delete possible numbered sessionstore-##.js files in the Firefox profile folder.

Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost and you will have to recreate them (make a note or bookmark them if possible).

If you have software like Advanced SystemCare with its Surfing Protection feature that might reset some files to older versions to protect these files against changes then check the settings or uninstall this software.

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This doesn't solve my problem and ensures that more trouble for me will result.

I have about 200 tabs open in four instances of FF, each with research history in it.

Everything worked until the Australis 29 update. I hoped the v30 update would restore the functionality that Australis broke.

As a disabled writer, I have absolutely no interest in recreating two years of research threads -- as well as all the preferences and extensions I needed to install by hand to fix the worst browser update I've seen since I quit IE to move to FF -- as a "solution" to a problem Mozilla arrogantly created with its update.

Tabs and their histories continue to revert to sites weeks old, erasing all of my current lines of research.

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Best would be to bookmark all tabs in all open windows, if you have more than one, and have a backup of your bookmarks. You can do that via the right-click context menu of a tab on the Tab bar.

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Once more, with feeling:

It's not only the open Tabs -- it's all the history threads backward and forward for each tab.

They represent specific lines of stepping-stone -- some 2000+ individual instances -- of research which have come to a grinding halt because Mozilla imposed a broken update version that nuked my Tab history.

I have a disabling muscle disease of my finger flexors which has drastically reduced the speed and accuracy of my typing.

Destroying my existing work is not a solution: fixing the underlying tab history on restore is a solution. When does Mozilla plan to address this bug?

I can't be the only one experiencing it.

JJB

JJB

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Chosen Solution

Did you check for numbered sessionstore files in your profile folder to see whether there might be a file with a more recent tab history?

I suggest backing up all files whose names start with sessionstore to a safe place (e.g., Documents folder) in case you need to mine them for history later.

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I did find a sessionstore.js dated from the beginning of the month.

When I copied all the SS js & bak files to another folder and deleted the older SS files from the profile folder, all the current Tabs I spot-inspected that had been giving me trouble reflected my last current session rather than from the beginning of June when the update loaded.

Something still seems goofy that only a dozen or so of the Tabs gave me this problem while the others worked fine.

If the problem resumes I'll post again. Otherwise, everything seems clear sailing now.

Thanks to all.

JJB

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The problem recurred almost immediately.

After some research into v33's SessionRestore changes, I realized this production-killing Tab Alzheimer's is a "feature improvement".

Therefor, yesterday I migrated to Pale Moon and all my loathing of the Australis UI -- with the very real, tears-of-frustration-inducing Tab-dementia bug -- was solved in one move.

Hey, Mozilla! Keep your Firefox "improvements" and go read Sir Arthur C. Clarke's cautionary tale "Superiority", which I took to heart as a tween over four decades ago.

JJB

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Current Firefox versions only store a maximum of 10 entries of tab back history as part of stored session data in the sessionstore.js file. So you lose tab back history beyond those ten entries when you use "Show my windows and tabs from last time" to restore open tabs on the next start. You can set this maximum via the browser.sessionstore.max_serialize_back pref on the about:config page. The default is 10 and a value of -1 will disable this maximum and allows to keep all back history entries.

See the description of this pref in this file (open via the location bar):

  • resource:///defaults/pref/firefox.js