Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Prevent tab restore on browser crash

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 13 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

thomas.loven1
thomas.loven1
more options

I've been having some issues with firefox trying to restore tabs from previous sessions. I've already turned off the option in the settings menu and it doesn't normally do it but occasionally my pc will crash when I have 4-5 tabs open (though that's because I got a bit of a potato laptop because of not reading the fine print but that's neither here nor there) and when this happens and I go to reopen firefox it will try to open those few tabs at once which creates a cycle of my computer freezing up. I tried looking at a couple of firefox help articles and have been directed to this page (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session) but I can't find the info relevant to my problem.

I've been having some issues with firefox trying to restore tabs from previous sessions. I've already turned off the option in the settings menu and it doesn't normally do it but occasionally my pc will crash when I have 4-5 tabs open (though that's because I got a bit of a potato laptop because of not reading the fine print but that's neither here nor there) and when this happens and I go to reopen firefox it will try to open those few tabs at once which creates a cycle of my computer freezing up. I tried looking at a couple of firefox help articles and have been directed to this page (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session) but I can't find the info relevant to my problem.

All Replies (3)

FredMcD
FredMcD
more options

You may have corrupt sessionstore [v56] sessionstore.jsonlz4 file(s). Delete all sessionstore* files and the sessionstore-backups folder.

Type about:support<enter> in the address bar.

Under the page logo on the left side, you will see Application Basics. Under this find Profile Folder. To its right press the button Show Folder. This will open your file browser to the current Firefox profile. Now Close Firefox.

Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder

Linux: Under the page logo on the left side, you will see Application Basics. Under this find Profile Directory. To its right press the button Open Directory.

Locate the above file. Then rename or delete it. Restart Firefox.


Don't delete the files if you need to rescue any data from them, just move them out of the profile folder to some location where Firefox doesn't look for them. You can try to read out their contents using this tool: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

Jonathan Watt
Jonathan Watt
more options

If you have the Firefox icon in your taskbar at the bottom of your screen, instead of clicking on it to start Firefox normally, right click on it and then in the context menu that opens click "Open new tab". After a crash, that will start Firefox with a window that has two tabs. The first tab contains a page with a "Restore Session" button in case you do actually want to restore your session (just close the tab if you don't).

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

You can set browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes = 0 on the about:config page.

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can click the button to "Accept the Risk and Continue".