Sometimes when closing firefox, something has opened a new browser session, and I close it, i lose all my tabs from the first session, how do i recover them?
Sometimes when closing Firefox, something has opened a new browser session that i didn't know about, and I close it too, and since it only has one tab open, it becomes the save session with only that open tab, thus i lose all my tabs from the first session, how do i recover all my tabs them from the first session? Sometimes, if Firefox has crashed, it asks if you want to recover your previous tabs, but only if it crashed! I would like an option to force that same recovery when you open Firefox and all your previous tabs are gone and replaced by one stupid tab you really didn't even want in the first place and not have to find every previous tab one at a time. If there was a recent history of sessions or at least the previous 2 sessions we could recover all the lost tabs from that first session! This has happened many, many times to me and if very frustrating to loose all my open tabs and have to start opening all my old tabs that i use all the time!
Fixyourlan
Modified by Fixyourlan
All Replies (11)
The browser only remembers what was displayed when the last window closes.
What is in the unwanted window?
About 100 tabs I had open and use all the time!
Just some link that opened a new site in a new browser session instead of in a new tab. Never the same site and does not always happen!
Are you talking about ads?
Go to the Mozilla Add-ons Web Page {web Link}
(There’s a lot of good stuff here) and search for a good ad blocker.
I use ad blocker, that has nothing to do with this problem of loosing all my tabs from closing my session when there was another open session hiding in the background with only 1 open tab! If I close that session, Firefox will open the next time with only that one tab with no way to recover all my old open tabs!
I have installed the session tab manager add-on that seems to save my old tabs that I can recover but will have to wait to build up all my open tabs again and wait for the problem to occur again to see if it recovers like it should. But Firefox should have several tab restore points to recover from this problem!
This has always been a problem for me since Firefox added tabs into the browser!
Modified by Fixyourlan
You may have ad/mal-ware. Further information can be found in this article; https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware?cache=no
Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. Each works differently. If one program misses something, another may pick it up.
Hi Fixyourlan, two thoughts:
(1) Recently Closed Windows list
If you use the Restore Previous Session feature, then up to 3 closed windows are carried over, so you can use this feature to restore them -- there are three access points:
- "3-bar" menu button > Library > History > Recently Closed Windows
- "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows
- (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows
(2) Use Exit to Quit Firefox
To avoid accidentally creating closed windows, use the menu to shut down Firefox. On Windows, that's either:
- "3-bar" menu button > Exit
- (menu bar) File > Exit
Hi Fixyourlan, perhaps you have already done this, but if not:
Back up your session history files so you don't have to worry about Firefox removing them before you can do some data recovery. 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 > "?" Help > 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, on the Profile Folder row, click the "Open Folder" 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
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 100 missing tabs?
To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page on my site, then click Scrounge URLs:
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html
You can save the page of links for re-opening pages, or we can dive into the more complex subject of how to coerce Firefox into using one of the old files in place of the current session.
Guess this would have worked if I hadn’t already opened and closed Firefox too many times already tryin the “tab session manager” I had found in searching for a solution. Thank you for your help and it enlightened me to that library history with the last 3 windows. I wish it kept more versions. I will remember this the next time this happens and recover it this way.
It has happened to me a lot and I’m sure it will happen again!
I would like to see a “restore previous tabs from a tab history list by previous sessions”. With a restore all tabs from a session or a check list of which ones to selectively restore!
Well, depending on how critical the tabs are, if the files on sessionstore-backups do not have what you need, we can give you other (less reliable) data recovery suggestions. For example:
Deleted File Recovery
A tool like Recuva can recover some erased files. This could be useful to track down recently removed session history files. Make sure Windows is set to show hidden files and folders:
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files
- https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
As noted above, the typical files names for session history files are:
- recovery.jsonlz4
- recovery.baklz4
- previous.jsonlz4
- upgrade.jsonlz4-20200507114007 (the number varies, indicating the "build" that was installed)
Shadow Copies
You can use a utility program to search inside restore points to try to locate an old file that's usable. (Please do NOT try to use the built-in Windows System Restore for this because you probably would lose data.)
(1) Set Windows to show hidden files and folders:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files
(2) Download and run one of these two programs:
- ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
- System Restore Explorer: http://nicbedford.co.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/
Within the most recent restore point shown in the program, you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:
\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
(3) Check in the sessionstore-backups folder of each profile for older backups. You can export interesting files to a convenient location such as your currently live desktop.
Any luck? You can use the Scrounger tool mentioned earlier to check each file's contents.