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Lost multiple firefox windows, and tabs, after doing REFRESH, and after CRASH. Is my profile, sessionstore gone?

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  • Last reply by AMAN ARYAN

mnalep
mnalep
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Firefox was hanging up. I got frustrated and I ended the session using task manager. On restart my windows came back, but the tabs were missing the page information. I ended the firefox session again, and did a restart of windows for good measure, hoping to get everything restored.

Then, when windows restarted, I restarted firefox, and I was presented two options - SAFE MODE, or REFRESH. I did SAFE MODE. Things looked ok, so I ended that session, and tried restarting again, hoping to restart normally, without SAFE MODE on. I got the same two options again - SAFE MODE or REFRESH. So, I thought REFRESH would get me back to my prior session. Nope. That reloaded a bunch of things, like bookmarks, etc. and gave me a new session.

So, I looked under the three line menu. No ability to RESTORE PREVIOUS SESSION!

I also looked in my profile as found in ABOUT:SUPPORT - PROFILE FOLDER, and in my SESSIONSTORE-BACKUPS folder in my profile folder my RECOVERY.baklz4, and my RECOVERY.jsonlz4 have todays date as DATE MODIFIED, but only are 33kb each - way to small for the hundreds of tabs I had open in multiple windows - I believe.

So, do I have any other recovery session folders available that I might be able to use?

Firefox was hanging up. I got frustrated and I ended the session using task manager. On restart my windows came back, but the tabs were missing the page information. I ended the firefox session again, and did a restart of windows for good measure, hoping to get everything restored. Then, when windows restarted, I restarted firefox, and I was presented two options - SAFE MODE, or REFRESH. I did SAFE MODE. Things looked ok, so I ended that session, and tried restarting again, hoping to restart normally, without SAFE MODE on. I got the same two options again - SAFE MODE or REFRESH. So, I thought REFRESH would get me back to my prior session. Nope. That reloaded a bunch of things, like bookmarks, etc. and gave me a new session. So, I looked under the three line menu. No ability to RESTORE PREVIOUS SESSION! I also looked in my profile as found in ABOUT:SUPPORT - PROFILE FOLDER, and in my SESSIONSTORE-BACKUPS folder in my profile folder my RECOVERY.baklz4, and my RECOVERY.jsonlz4 have todays date as DATE MODIFIED, but only are 33kb each - way to small for the hundreds of tabs I had open in multiple windows - I believe. So, do I have any other recovery session folders available that I might be able to use?

All Replies (2)

mnalep
mnalep Question owner
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I restarted FF, after Xing those empty windows. The two windows I left opened, I did not even look at the 2nd one for hours (the one that seemed to not be working, and would not close earlier). Then, I clicked on it a after a few hours, and it seems to be starting to work! The tabs only have text desciptions in them, no graphical icons, but if I click o na tab it refreshes the page, and the graphical icon.

Makes me wonder if I should have left those other windows with single tabs open longer?

AMAN ARYAN
AMAN ARYAN
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Hi mnalep , usually Firefox will attempt an automatic crash recovery for a regular (non-private) session. Could you check whether either of these are available (not grayed out): 

   "3-bar" menu button > Restore Previous Session
   (menu bar) History > Restore Previous Session

If they are grayed, check either: 

   "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows (and within each restored window, Recently Closed Tabs)
   (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows (and within each restored window, Recently Closed Tabs)

If that doesn't help...

Firefox creates numerous session history files, but because session history is only for the immediately previous session, it is unfortunately too easy to lose it. Could you start by making a backup of your existing session history files? Here's how:

Do not exit Firefox, or if you closed it, don't re-open it.

(1) To open your profile folder...

If Firefox is still running:

You can 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 "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.

If Firefox is closed:

Type or paste the following into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

In that folder, do you see a semi-randomly-named folder? If so, click into it. If you find multiple such folders, find the one that was most recently updated.

(2) Copy out session history files

In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.

(3) What files did you find?

The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are: 

   recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
   recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
   previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
   upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
   various .js files from Firefox 55 or earlier

Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?

To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.

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