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How can i stop firefox from trying to restore my previous sessions

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  • 62 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Hershmab

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Ever since I updated to firefox 20.0 I've been having a problem with firefox. Every time I start up firefox I get a message saying that this is so embarrassing for trying but failing to restore my previous session and it gives me the option to either close the page and go to the welcome screen, or to restore my previous session. My preferences has the show my home page selected, and every time that I close out of firefox, I close the page by hitting the red x, and then I highlight either the firefox icon or the firefox tab at the top of my screen and select quit. I reset firefox twice and that didn't work either.

Ever since I updated to firefox 20.0 I've been having a problem with firefox. Every time I start up firefox I get a message saying that this is so embarrassing for trying but failing to restore my previous session and it gives me the option to either close the page and go to the welcome screen, or to restore my previous session. My preferences has the show my home page selected, and every time that I close out of firefox, I close the page by hitting the red x, and then I highlight either the firefox icon or the firefox tab at the top of my screen and select quit. I reset firefox twice and that didn't work either.

Chosen solution

A possible cause can be that you are first closing all Firefox windows and then close the Firefox application.

Some have reported that closing Firefox (Firefox > Quit) while the browser window is still open works for them.

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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.

Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.

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

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Tried it didn't work

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hello, this should be addressed in a later version of firefox. as a workaround in the meanwhile you could try this: enter about:config into the firefox location bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash. double-click it and change its value to false.

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Chosen Solution

A possible cause can be that you are first closing all Firefox windows and then close the Firefox application.

Some have reported that closing Firefox (Firefox > Quit) while the browser window is still open works for them.

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That did it! In previous versions if I quit the application without closing the window it would ask me to restore my previous session I guess that is not the case with 20.0+.

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None of the solutions listed so far have worked for me. It's ridiculous that Firefox thinks we should have to do some workaround to solve an error rather than address the problem.

What this problem has done for me now is to lock me out of my online and mobile banking because the message from them says I did not log out properly from my account. Well, that's due to Firefox not closing properly.

I never had this "restore my previous session issue." My question now is.... Can I revert back safely to Firefox 19.0?

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I had the same problem and have only just solved it for myself.

I had set my Startup options to a blank screen for both Home-Page and Startup, i.e. "about:blank". That caused no problems with pre-21.0 versions of FF.

But with the installation of 21.0, I started getting the "embarrassing...." message on startup, and it always referred to the missing tab as about:blank. The Startup/Startup option does not actually name the blank screen as about:blank, so I thought that it must be the Startup/Home-Page option that was the issue.

Although I do not need or even want a home page, I chose a not-otherwise objectionable page and inserted its URL in the Startup/Home-Page option. And it worked! No more embarrassment all round.