granturinos said

the old Firefox data folder on my desktop was deleted by accident.

Look in your Recycle Bin. It might still be there.

Something happened and all my bookmarks are gone

What about the rest of the profile? settings, history, passwords . . .

I looked everywhere. No signs of them. Everything gone.

Type about:profiles<enter> in the address bar. How many profiles are listed? How many should be there?

Restore Bookmark Backups

Firefox automatically makes backups of the bookmarks. These are stored in the bookmarkbackups folder.

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Restore. From the list, pick the file you want and click it.

The backups are stored in a jsonlz4 file named something like this; bookmarks-2016-06-29_1424_enD1GTH ya0JmicnYWg4V4g==.jsonlz4

In this example; 2016-06-29 = date created, 1424 = number of entries.

There are two profiles.

One under root directory and one under local directory.

Not sure how many there should be.

Nothing under bookmarks, but I did see that file jsonlz4 but it was from 3/5/18. The late day I had the bookmarks was 3/2/18. My IT guy here also ran CCleaner.

I called for more help.

granturinos said

Something happened and all my bookmarks are gone

FredMcD said

What about the rest of the profile? settings, history, passwords . . .

granturinos said

I looked everywhere. No signs of them. Everything gone.

Did you mean just the bookmarks or the whole profile?

Any luck?

What folders and files do you see under 'root directory' (AppData\Roaming)?

• C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

What happened that caused the bookmarks to disappear?

I am not sure how to get to but I did try:

What folders and files do you see under 'root directory' (AppData\Roaming)?

   C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\ 

I don't know, but I know the old file folder that was on my desktop was deleted, then a system restore was done followed by CCleaner.

Nothing helped getting them back

Hi, Ya sorry to hear that. Once the Old was deleted was the last chance. CCeaner can be useful and then is not if settings are not gone through. Again sorry for your Bookmark loss.

Hi granturinos, I don't trust System Restore... but you could check for additional files in other restore points.

First, set Windows to show hidden files and folders if yours isn't already (I think you did this already, but just in case):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

Next, try one of these programs:

• ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
• System Restore Explorer: http://nicbedford.co.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/

Within each restore point you check, you can explore along these paths to the bookmarkbackups folder to see whether you can find a potentially useful file:

• \Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
• \Users\your-user-name\Desktop\Old Firefox Data

Copy the file out to the desktop, since the original location may be missing or changed.

jscher2000 is the man!

I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing but I followed the instructions. I did this option: \Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

It worked! Thanks so much. Glad I kept asking because most users said they were gone for good/

jscher2000 said

Hi granturinos, I don't trust System Restore... but you could check for additional files in other restore points. First, set Windows to show hidden files and folders if yours isn't already (I think you did this already, but just in case): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files Next, try one of these programs:

• ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
• System Restore Explorer: http://nicbedford.co.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/

Within each restore point you check, you can explore along these paths to the bookmarkbackups folder to see whether you can find a potentially useful file:

• \Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
• \Users\your-user-name\Desktop\Old Firefox Data

Copy the file out to the desktop, since the original location may be missing or changed.

jscher2000 is the man!

I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing but I followed the instructions. I did this option: \Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

It worked! Thanks so much. Glad I kept asking because most users said they were gone for good.

I use an add-on that makes backups of my user profile, Just In Case. Unfortunately, it is not compatible with the current Firefox.

Every now and then, open the profile folder and create a copy of the current profile as is to another location on your hard drive. This way you will have a backup.

If you do this each day, you will not lose much data. This should be done with Firefox Closed.

Note: In case you need to restore from these backups, you may need to overwrite old or corrupted files.