Fresh WIndows 10 install and firefox sync forgotten password deleted all my bookmarks!!
After 8 or 9 years building my bookmarks on FF, a recent Windows 10 fresh install and a FF sync have wreaked havoc with my bookmarks. Assuming that changing a password was the most innocuous thing one can do to restore a forgotten password to sync these bookmarks, I get the shock of my life that all my bookmarks have been deleted on the server because of this change of password!!! No warning whatsoever!!! How on earth am I going to restore these bookmarks from a back up if they don't exist on a new OS. I did make a Windows image back up of previous Windows 7 but I can't see how i can just pick the FF backup without restoring the whole OS!! Anyone can help with this, please? Why on earth can't I access these bookmarks from the servers?
Gekozen oplossing
i don't think that those backup containers have any particular encryption. there are tutorials on the internet how to extract particular data out of them: http://www.howtogeek.com/125704/how-to-extract-individual-files-from-a-windows-7-system-image-backup/
if you manage to do so, you'll want to create a copy of your old profile folder - this should usually be located on the drive under \Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data
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hi, before you start the password reset procedure at https://accounts.firefox.com/reset_password you get warned that this will wipe all sync data on the servers! this is inevitable because the sync system is implemented with data security as primary focus: your password is the only way to decrypt the data once it leaves your device - if it's gone then the data is useless as well! (also sync is not intended as a backup system but to keep multiple connected devices on a same level)
how exactly did you create the backup of your old windows disk?
Hi philipp Thanks for your help. I've used Windows backup tool for that and the resulting file is encrypted so only a Windows restoring tool would be able to decrypt. Are you saying that there might be a way to retrieve application data files from a Windows backup? Cheers!
Gekozen oplossing
i don't think that those backup containers have any particular encryption. there are tutorials on the internet how to extract particular data out of them: http://www.howtogeek.com/125704/how-to-extract-individual-files-from-a-windows-7-system-image-backup/
if you manage to do so, you'll want to create a copy of your old profile folder - this should usually be located on the drive under \Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data
Thanks for your help! That did it!!!! I should stop assuming and start googling! :-)
Thanks again!