Recovering bookmarks after a harddrive wipe.
I recently had trouble with my laptop where it got stuck in an endless loop of restarting, trying to repair, failing, and restarting again. As it turned out, Windows had become corrupted so, to fix it, my important files were saved from my harddrive and then everything was wiped before Windows 7 was reinstalled. So, basically I'm starting over from scratch. Firefox was removed in this process so I had to reinstall it and, as you would expect, all my bookmarks are gone. I was wondering if there was anyway to recover them or if they're lost for good. I had a lot of writing resources saved that I don't have memorised so it would be really good to get them back. Thanks for any help!
All Replies (4)
Hello,
If you reformatted your computer, I'm not sure if you can recover anything. However, if you still have a copy of your old hard drive before the reformat (in a folder like windows.old), please see the article Recover important data from an old profile - the article will tell you where you can access your Firefox profile (the windows.old folder should have the same directory tree to your old Firefox profile) in addition to which files you can copy over (places.sqlite is where bookmarks are stored for Firefox).
If you set up a Firefox sync account in your old profile, you may be able to sync your bookmarks that way too.
Does the backup include the location of the Firefox <strike>program</strike> profile folder?
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
The "AppData" folder in Windows Vista and later Window 7+ versions and the "Application Data" folder in XP/Win2K are hidden folders.
Modified by cor-el
Thank you both for your replies. I've tried your suggestions but can only find the current profile so I'm assuming the old one must have been deleted with everything else. I understand that it's probably a lost cause but thought I'd ask here just in case there was something I could do. Again, thanks for your help.
You mentioned that your important files were saved from your hard drive. Can you track down the old profile folder in the backup along the same path? Just in case you can't find the AppData folder: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files