Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

My bookmarks vanished after restoring my pc..

more options

When I returned to where I was they had vanished. I searched for a few hours and then signed up for mozillazine. I asked anyine to talk me through getting them back and received 5 replies but when I tried replying to them I kept being re-directed. To cut to the chase, I'm screwed. Can anyone help me to find my bookmarks - PLEASE!!!!

When I returned to where I was they had vanished. I searched for a few hours and then signed up for mozillazine. I asked anyine to talk me through getting them back and received 5 replies but when I tried replying to them I kept being re-directed. To cut to the chase, I'm screwed. Can anyone help me to find my bookmarks - PLEASE!!!!

All Replies (20)

more options

Do you have an "Old Firefox Data" folder on the desktop?

Did you manage to find your current Firefox profile folder? You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

If you go up one level then you can check if there is only one profile folder.

  • C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

It is possible that you lost the profiles.ini file and that Firefox has switched to another profile or has created a new profile.

more options

OK, so that's kind of Greek to me. I HAVE found the "troubleshooting" folder but when I look there it's just a series of files that I don't understand. For instance "places.sqlite". When I tried to open that file before I got a message that said something like "How do you want to open this file?". Well, I don't know is the answer to that.

Do you see my problem?.......

more options

No. I don't have any Old Firefox Data on my desktop btw.

more options

You do not need to open files in the profile folder, it is sufficient to know that the folder and the files are present.

Can you post a screenshot that shows the content of the bookmarkbackups folder in Details view?

  • Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
  • Make sure that you do not exceed the maximum size of 1 MB

Did you look on the desktop for a possible "Old Firefox Data" folder?

EDIT: OK, I just noticed your post above, so you didn't reset Firefox.

Modified by cor-el

more options

Did you do a Windows System Restore and restored Windows to an older restore point?

more options

OK, I have a screen shot on my desktop. I don't have a clue how I get it to you mind! Yes I did a Windows restore.

more options

BTW, I don't know what you mean by "details view" sorry.

more options

You can see a Browse button below the text area where you type a reply. If you click this button then you get a file picker window and you can browse to the location where you saved the screenshot.


You can change how Windows Explorer displays folder content via the right-click context menu in the View sub menu. Details is one of the possible choices.

more options

Can you look in the View menu or right-click in the folder area and switch to View > Details view?

The icon view in your screenshot only shows the names partially.

You can also click the second icon and go to the bookmarkbackups folder where possible JSON backups could be available that would allow to restore the bookmarks.

more options

Is that better? There is nothing of that kind in the View menu also that file in profiles is from yesterday I think and isn't relevant.

more options

Could you open the bookmarkbackups folder?

I do notice some folder with a number (2) appended to the name. Such folder wouldn't be there normally, so I'm not sure what caused them to get created this Sunday. I don't know if a System Restore would have this effect.

more options

Erm, I'll try.

more options

Ok, it says "Use the web service to open up an appropriate program" or something like that. It's a dialogue bow I get when I click on it. Any idea how to open it?

more options

There shouldn't be a problem to open the bookmarkbackups folder. The folder shows as the second item in the last screenshot under the adblockplus folder.

more options

Yep. It won't open.

more options

Ok my friend, I need to go to bed now. It's very nearly 12 am here. Thanks for all you're doing though. I'll speak to you sometime tomorrow. :-)

more options

You can do a disk check with the chkdsk.exe program. If you run the chkdsk.exe program from a cmd.exe Command window then you can read the response from the chkdsk.exe program. Open a cmd.exe window: Start > Run: cmd.exe <press Enter> At the command prompt (>) type or Copy&Paste: chkdsk.exe /f /r <press Enter> (put a space before /f and /r) If you get something like: Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? y/n then answer the question with "Y" and close all programs and reboot the computer.

more options

Right, I've done that. There doesn't appear to be any report. I wasn't in for the last hour and when I got back, it had finished doing what it was doing and I simply had the desktop on the screen.

  1. 1
  2. 2