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Firefox wasn't responding so I went into task manager and hit "end process". History and bookmarks gone and "Old FIrefox Data" folder's from a yar ago. Help!

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  • Last reply by cor-el

TonyB500
TonyB500
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So I was waiting for an update that was installing for World of Warcraft and my PC was running slow. And Firefox wasn't responding so I went into task manager and hit "end process", which I've done numerous times already. However, when I loaded up Firefox again, my history was gone, my bookmarks were gone, basically everything was just gone! I immediately panicked and went to my "Old Firefox Data" folder on my desktop. However, the history and bookmarks were from over a year ago! I don't know what happened to the data from the past year. And I can't just do a system restore because I was running out of memory and deleted my restore points. I don't know what to do, i don't why my history was erased, Firefox wasn't even updating. Is there any way to even get that lost information back? :(

So I was waiting for an update that was installing for World of Warcraft and my PC was running slow. And Firefox wasn't responding so I went into task manager and hit "end process", which I've done numerous times already. However, when I loaded up Firefox again, my history was gone, my bookmarks were gone, basically everything was just gone! I immediately panicked and went to my "Old Firefox Data" folder on my desktop. However, the history and bookmarks were from over a year ago! I don't know what happened to the data from the past year. And I can't just do a system restore because I was running out of memory and deleted my restore points. I don't know what to do, i don't why my history was erased, Firefox wasn't even updating. Is there any way to even get that lost information back? :(

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jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
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Your system data (thank you for sharing) shows you have Classic Theme Restorer installed, so are your settings intact, the key thing missing is bookmarks and history?

There's no history backup, but Firefox does make routine bookmark backups. Could you check whether you have any available to restore. These usually appear on the Restore menu in the Library dialog. This article has the steps:

Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

Does that work?

If that doesn't work, or if history is really critical, you might need to try a corrupted database fix. Please make a backup of the database for safekeeping. Here's where I would expect to file it:

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 "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Scroll down and look for places.sqlite-corrupt and copy that to a convenient location (e.g., your Documents folder).

To try to resuscitate that file, see: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Tech/Places/places.sqlite_Database_Troubleshooting

(I haven't tried it myself.)

cor-el
cor-el
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You can check in Windows Explorer if there is a previous version of the places.sqlite file available.