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How can I make sure my history doesn't expire and that I can transfer over places.sqlite?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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There's probably alot of questions on this subject asked already but I've gone over just about all of the possibly relevant ones that've been already asked and I still can't figure out what to do. I'm trying to move my complete history from an XP Firefox profile over to a Windows 7 profile on another computer. Do I just do it by copying the places.sqlite file within that XP profile over into my USB flash drive, then replacing the places.sqlite in the Winodws 7 profile with the one from the other one? And after the file's in the right profile will I be able to just view all the sites I viewed on the old computer on the new one's history dialog box? I only am transferring my XP history to my Windows 7 because I want to look at stuff several months back and it keeps expiring on me, even to the point of getting rid of a month of history a week or so ago. This brings me to my other point, I keep up fairly well with updating both of my Firefoxes but recently (and I think this was way, way after they updated the browser so the history isn't set to expire by days anymore) the history just isn't reliable anymore. My XP will not only expire older months of history faster and faster it seems, but individual websites at the end of each month will actually disappear as I view new ones, instead of it all staying in there and just expiring each old month as a whole. Also, random sites in every month scattered all over the list of URLs will just disappear, and random sites that I've only visited in the past couple days will insert themselves randomly into much older months of history, which makes it hard to figure out the URLs I've seen, this last one seems like a common problem from what I've read, and all of these problems seem to be slowly creeping into my Windows 7 as well when they were originally on only my XP. The thing is for a very long time my Windows 7 would keep every ounce of my history that I kept on it, unless of course I went through the Clear History process myself. Now it seems to be slowly deleting it and having all the other problems that I mentioned earlier. I've got 592 GB out of 931 GB that's free space on my Windows 7 that I want to transfer my XP history into, and my Control Panel System panel says I've got 8 gbs of RAM in total. If I need to get some other information on RAM mention how to do that if you could. So in total, how can I transfer my XP history over into my Windows 7 so I can view all the sites I viewed on my XP in my Windows 7 history panel, as well as view all the old expired and/or manually deleted history on my Windows 7, without worrying about whether it will expire itself while I'm viewing it and writing down the relevant URLs that I need to know about. If I can only keep all my history through installing an add-on, a link to a relevant legal add-on that'll work well on both operating systems would be appreciated. Thanks to all here. (:

There's probably alot of questions on this subject asked already but I've gone over just about all of the possibly relevant ones that've been already asked and I still can't figure out what to do. I'm trying to move my complete history from an XP Firefox profile over to a Windows 7 profile on another computer. Do I just do it by copying the places.sqlite file within that XP profile over into my USB flash drive, then replacing the places.sqlite in the Winodws 7 profile with the one from the other one? And after the file's in the right profile will I be able to just view all the sites I viewed on the old computer on the new one's history dialog box? I only am transferring my XP history to my Windows 7 because I want to look at stuff several months back and it keeps expiring on me, even to the point of getting rid of a month of history a week or so ago. This brings me to my other point, I keep up fairly well with updating both of my Firefoxes but recently (and I think this was way, way after they updated the browser so the history isn't set to expire by days anymore) the history just isn't reliable anymore. My XP will not only expire older months of history faster and faster it seems, but individual websites at the end of each month will actually disappear as I view new ones, instead of it all staying in there and just expiring each old month as a whole. Also, random sites in every month scattered all over the list of URLs will just disappear, and random sites that I've only visited in the past couple days will insert themselves randomly into much older months of history, which makes it hard to figure out the URLs I've seen, this last one seems like a common problem from what I've read, and all of these problems seem to be slowly creeping into my Windows 7 as well when they were originally on only my XP. The thing is for a very long time my Windows 7 would keep every ounce of my history that I kept on it, unless of course I went through the Clear History process myself. Now it seems to be slowly deleting it and having all the other problems that I mentioned earlier. I've got 592 GB out of 931 GB that's free space on my Windows 7 that I want to transfer my XP history into, and my Control Panel System panel says I've got 8 gbs of RAM in total. If I need to get some other information on RAM mention how to do that if you could. So in total, how can I transfer my XP history over into my Windows 7 so I can view all the sites I viewed on my XP in my Windows 7 history panel, as well as view all the old expired and/or manually deleted history on my Windows 7, without worrying about whether it will expire itself while I'm viewing it and writing down the relevant URLs that I need to know about. If I can only keep all my history through installing an add-on, a link to a relevant legal add-on that'll work well on both operating systems would be appreciated. Thanks to all here. (:

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Hello Saethwyr99,

Do I just do it by copying the places.sqlite file within that XP profile over into my USB flash drive, then replacing the places.sqlite in the Winodws 7 profile with the one from the other one?

you are correct : Your important data and their files

Also, random sites in every month scattered all over the list of URLs will just disappear, and random sites that I've only visited in the past couple days will insert themselves randomly into much older months of history, which makes it hard to figure out the URLs I've seen, this last one seems like a common problem from what I've read, and all of these problems seem to be slowly creeping into my Windows 7 as well when they were originally on only my XP.

from Firefox 4 and above versions there is not a time limit for the history. Firefox determines automatically how many pages can be kept without affecting the performance.

as well as view all the old expired and/or manually deleted history on my Windows 7

i think this in not possible

If I can only keep all my history through installing an add-on, a link to a relevant legal add-on that'll work well on both operating systems would be appreciated.

check the next add-on : Expire history by days


thank you

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If there are problems with the history then this can be caused by a problem with the places.sqlite file and in such a case is it not a good idea to copy such a file to another profile/computer.

Also note that places.sqlite also stores the bookmarks, so you lose your current bookmarks and will get the XP bookmarks.
So better make sure to update the bookmarks when experimenting.