Bookmarks restore after HDD crash
I have an Acer Aspire 5750G , Intel Core i7, OS windows 7 sp1. A few days ago the HDD crashed and Acer installed a new one. After restarting the PC I made a silly mistake as I changed the PC name from mario to MPF so the Windows procedure for reimporting the old setting failed to reinstall my Firefox bookmarks. However I had another complete windows backup and I managed to locate my hidden bookmarks and to reimport them to C:\Users\MPF\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\osihdbpk.default \bookmarkbackups. Now, when I launch firefox 12.0 and I go to Bookmarks-show all bookmarks - import and save - restore I can see all backups, including the ones I imported from the external disk backup but, when I try to restore my old bokkmarks, I get the message ."impossible to process the backup files" ( if I try to restore a non-imported backup everything goes smoothly) What can I do ?
Chosen solution
ok, sorry for not giving more detailed instructions
- before you proceed further, please close all open firefox windows & make a backup of all the files in your the current osihdbpk.default-profile folder that start with places. to a secure location (copy and paste them to your desktop for example)
edit: you also might want to configure windows so that it does show file-extensions, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wi.../show-or-hide-file-name-extensions
- then delete all the files in your current profile folder which names start with places.
- have a close look into your old profile folder - normally there should be three files named places.sqlite, places.sqlite-shm & places.sqlite-wal. you only want to copy the first one into your current profile. if there are indeed places.sqlite, places(1).sqlite, places(2).sqlite, rightclick them and have a look into each file's properties/change-date. only copy the most up-to-date into your current profile & rename it to places.sqlite
- then start up firefox again & see if that has worked...
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (5)
can you try to put the places.sqlite file from the old profile folder into your new osihdbpk.default-profile?
Thanks a lot for your kind and prompt answer and please accept my apologizes for having to ask more detailed instructions : I am not quite computer-illiterate but I am defintly NOT an expert either ! I did as you suggested, I found 3 ( three !) places squilte files and I imported all 3 of them, without overwriting the existing one, now I have FOUR in : C:\Users\MPF\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\osihdbpk.default : places.sqlite. places (2).sqlite, etc. I suppose I have to delete three of them, is that right ? (the restore still does not work)
Chosen Solution
ok, sorry for not giving more detailed instructions
- before you proceed further, please close all open firefox windows & make a backup of all the files in your the current osihdbpk.default-profile folder that start with places. to a secure location (copy and paste them to your desktop for example)
edit: you also might want to configure windows so that it does show file-extensions, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wi.../show-or-hide-file-name-extensions
- then delete all the files in your current profile folder which names start with places.
- have a close look into your old profile folder - normally there should be three files named places.sqlite, places.sqlite-shm & places.sqlite-wal. you only want to copy the first one into your current profile. if there are indeed places.sqlite, places(1).sqlite, places(2).sqlite, rightclick them and have a look into each file's properties/change-date. only copy the most up-to-date into your current profile & rename it to places.sqlite
- then start up firefox again & see if that has worked...
Modified by philipp
See also:
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
The usual cause of the "impossible to process the backup files" message is that you try to import or restore a file with the wrong file type or a missing file extension.
A JSON backup needs to be restored and an HTML backup needs to be imported.
- JSON: Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Restore > Choose File
- HTML: Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks > Import & Backup > Import HTML : "From File"
Thanks again to both of you. In fact the solution madperson suggested worked perfectly and I did not need to test any other suggestion. Thank again so much !!!