I'm sorry to hear about this. Firefox doesn't keep backups of history, so there isn't a quick solution to restoring what was deleted.

I wonder whether Firefox determined that the Places database file -- the file which stores bookmarks and history -- had become corrupted and started a new one. The only way there would be history in a fresh file if it had been restored from data in the Sync cloud (if you use Sync).

In this situation, I think Firefox preserves the "corrupted" file, and it might be possible to still obtain information from it. However, this is hit or miss. Either way, the first step is to see whether you have such a file:

Sometimes the settings file that stores window dimensions becomes corrupted with nonsensical values. You can rename the file and have Firefox rebuild it. Here's how:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > More 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. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows File Explorer.

Scroll down and look for places.sqlite.corrupt or places.sqlite-corrupt and if you find one, right-click > Copy, then right-click > Paste on your desktop or somewhere else that there's no danger of Firefox modifying/replacing it.

Did you find anything along those lines?

hello,

sorry for late response.

i found those files and copy-pasted those files on my desktop, as per your suggestions. what to do now?

Could you try using this third party program to list out the history in one of those files:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html

After downloading/installing:

(1) Double-click MozillaHistoryView.exe to start it up

(2) The program might list your currently live places.sqlite file. To read out the file you pasted to your desktop, click the ... button to the right of the file name (this is the first field on the screen for this program).

Note: if you cannot open the file with its original extension (.corrupt or .sqlite-corrupt) you might need to first rename the file to something like places-corrupt.sqlite (making sure the extension is .sqlite) before the program can read its contents.

(3) Uncheck the date range boxes to make sure you see everything.

(4) Click OK and see what the program can extract. Anything?

i did change the extension of the file "places.sqlite.corrupt-shm" (which i copy pasted on my desktop) to "places-corrupt.sqlite" to make the file readable in the program. but i didn't see anything as per your step 4. did i do it correctly?

The -shm and -wal files are temporary files used while Firefox is open and if Firefox shut down normally, I suspect there wouldn't be anything in them.

so what should i do now? those are the files that i got

The only ".corrupt" file was a the -wal file? In that case, I don't think the problem was that Firefox moved your old history to a places.sqlite.corrupt file.

Do you keep any backups of your system (and in particular, your Firefox profile folder)?

Windows itself may have captured a copy of an older places.sqlite database file when it updated itself. This is called a shadow copy, and you can explore for one using either of the following tools. They unfortunately do not seem to always recover a readable file, but you certainly can give it a try:

(1) Set Windows to show hidden files and folders, if you haven't done this before:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5

(2) Download and install one of the following programs:

• ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
• Shadow Copy View: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shadow_copy_view.html

(3) Start up the program and look for the latest restore point. Then 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\your.profile

(4) Export out the places.sqlite file to your Windows desktop, then try reading out its contents using MozillaHistoryView.exe.

Anything usable there?

no. nothing usable there. it shows empty

I can't think of any other copies of the file that might be squirreled away. If you happened to use the Firefox Refresh feature at some point in the past, there would have been an Old Firefox Data folder placed on your desktop. But it might be quite old by now if you have one.

i think there's no other way to recover my browser history now. anyway, thanks for your support!