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All tabs, history bookmarks lost

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My regular profile has deleted all saved history, tabs, bookmarks, etc. This happened before and seems related to having private browings open. and to an update in progress or recent.

Opend a private window. Then noticed regular FF wasn't opened. I opened the usual profile and all saved info is gone. Also, my stuff to be synced is way out of date so can't restore from there (I always had sync up to date). My "backup" can't be opened to restore.

Where do I find yesrterday's info? How do I restore my session, bookmarks, etc?

Last time, I tried to follow directions I found soemwhere but the instruction werent clear at all and had to restore from a disk image.

Why is there stsill the private window deleting regular window?

My regular profile has deleted all saved history, tabs, bookmarks, etc. This happened before and seems related to having private browings open. and to an update in progress or recent. Opend a private window. Then noticed regular FF wasn't opened. I opened the usual profile and all saved info is gone. Also, my stuff to be synced is way out of date so can't restore from there (I always had sync up to date). My "backup" can't be opened to restore. Where do I find yesrterday's info? How do I restore my session, bookmarks, etc? Last time, I tried to follow directions I found soemwhere but the instruction werent clear at all and had to restore from a disk image. Why is there stsill the private window deleting regular window?

All Replies (5)

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The profile was the same as used the prior evening. FF had not been updated.

All the profiles currently bring up the same "empty" session. I still think this is related to the private window. Twice now all have been lost when private window seems to act upon regular window and wiping everything.

The support article you cite isn't useful if the "places.sqlite" is itself changed. None of the "places.sqlite" in the profiles seem different in size and thus are not the ones from the regular window. None of them pre-date the loss.

Aren't there any backups to these profiles when changes occur? FF was set to sync to my account but evidently hasn't in some time.

The wiki article is confusing.

There really ought to be some way to recover these important files and especially to keep private window from deleting regular window.

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Found this earlier query, which seems to be the issues I have had. Hasn't been solved yet, has it? https://support.mozilla.org/ta/questions/1409205

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If you use a PB mode window, nothing is saved to the profile folder and you won't be able to recover from a crash or if Firefox otherwise is closed. If you regularly have crashes, be careful and bookmark important pages or use means other than PB mode to disable specific features.

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This is the first time this situation has been acknowledged. I have never found this caution anywhere before and certainly using PB does NOT alert the user to such a dangerous effect on the regular browser window. Had this been acknowlegded the last time I lost the regular brpwser, I would have quit usingh PB. The link you cite does not caution about the effect of PB on regular browser.

The profile backup tools no longer act in current FB versions, which ought to be rectified. Otherwise, one must manually copy the places.sqlite to another location everytime one starts to use FF? Why doesn't PB only affect the private session and not the entire profile? Why aren't the open tabs in a file like the bookmarks, that can be backed up and copied over in case of a crash?

If you use a PB mode window, nothing is saved to the profile folder and you won't be able to recover from a crash or if Firefox otherwise is closed.