problems restoring previous tabs
Yesterday, I aborted the Adobe Flash Player installation when I discovered that it tried to install a virus scanner, too. I restarted the Adobe Flash Player installation unchecking this option, and after restart of Firefox, my tabs (I guess more than hundred tabs in five windows) were gone. I saved old versions of sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak, and but don't know how to restore them. Editing the files shows me that they really contain my old URLs including their history. Copying sessionstore.js in the profile folder and then restarting Firefox doesn't work because Firefox renames sessionstore.js in sessionstore.bak and creates a new sessionstore.js. Even entering about:sessionrestore then doesn't work. Can anyone help me?
Isisombulu esikhethiweyo
Dear jscher2000,
thank you very much for your immediate support. I guess that I tried this before.
In the meantime, I found a solution, which is certainly not optimal and quite cumbersome, but it has worked: I searched for various old sessionstore.js (or .bak etc.) files and edited them in order to make sure that they contained my previous tabs. I took one of them and formatted it with a JSON Formatter, http://www.freeformatter.com/json-formatter.html. The tool complaint that my file was too big (1.5 MB), but it did its job nevertheless and made the file readable. Then I edited the file with Cygwin vi editor, which allows me to easily find the corresponding brackets using the “%” command (in principle, any editor will do), and copied the URLs into newly created browser tabs. I took me some time, but I now have my tabs back, losing their history, but it doesn’t matter.
Funda le mpendulo kwimeko leyo 👍 0All Replies (6)
Good job saving the old files!
Usually sessionstore.js contains your current session (or if Firefox is closed, your immediately previous session) and sessionstore.bak contains your previous session.
If you think you want to restore the session represented by sessionstore.bak, you can try this:
Exit Firefox and in your currently active profile folder, rename the current sessionstore.js to sessionstore.bad
Copy your old sessionstore.bak file to the folder and rename it to sessionstore.js
When you start Firefox, the old session should be available from History > Restore Previous Session
Any luck?
Did you try to restore the previous session (History > Restore Previous Session) or check "History > Recently Closed Tabs/Windows"?
Isisombululo esiKhethiweyo
Dear jscher2000,
thank you very much for your immediate support. I guess that I tried this before.
In the meantime, I found a solution, which is certainly not optimal and quite cumbersome, but it has worked: I searched for various old sessionstore.js (or .bak etc.) files and edited them in order to make sure that they contained my previous tabs. I took one of them and formatted it with a JSON Formatter, http://www.freeformatter.com/json-formatter.html. The tool complaint that my file was too big (1.5 MB), but it did its job nevertheless and made the file readable. Then I edited the file with Cygwin vi editor, which allows me to easily find the corresponding brackets using the “%” command (in principle, any editor will do), and copied the URLs into newly created browser tabs. I took me some time, but I now have my tabs back, losing their history, but it doesn’t matter.
Go back to the Adobe Flash Player installation web page. But read carefully what you are asked. The site does ask if you want the other program.
Note that in current Firefox releases you can open the file in the Scratchpad (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer) and click the "Pretty Print" button to format JSON files for readability and save such a file or edit the file in the Scratchpad.
Thank you, cor-el, for this advice. I didn't know before.
Ilungisiwe ngu fifosts