Hopefully they aren't gone, but you may need to rescue them from your prior profile.

First, you may want to make a backup of your old default profile folder. It contains not only your current bookmarks, but a folder of backups. But these are not saved forever. To back up Firefox, see Backing up your information.

The following article has suggestions for recovering bookmarks: Lost Bookmarks | Troubleshooting | Firefox Help.

Any luck?

Hi, thanks for trying to help me. I checked out the backup link you sent, but all that is there is the new profile (with today's date since the new version of Firefox was installed today). I'm trying to find the bookmarks we had saved on a previous version of Firefox. Is this possible? Or, is it possible to restore that version and hope that the bookmarks are still there?

If the previous version of Firefox was on the same PC and you did not do a full uninstall (did not remove personal settings), then there should be a profile folder containing your bookmarks. On Windows 7, it would be under the same path as your active profile folder:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Edit: I haven't installed a beta, so the above is based on a regular version upgrade or install-over-previous-version.

Thanks I just tried that but it still isn't showing the previous bookmarks. This is so frustrating because we've lost two years worth of bookmarks.

Did you install Windows 7 as an upgrade from Windows XP? I wonder whether Firefox was using a more XP-like path for your profile folder.

If you do a global search of your C drive for places.sqlite (you might need to allow searching of hidden files and folders if you don't already have that turned on) can you find any in unexpected locations?

Checked to see if hidden files are allowed and then did the global search...still nothing. Thanks for all your suggestions though!

I'm baffled. I thought that beta installs were supposed to be nondestructive. Maybe someone who has tried other betas can provide some more suggestions.

The Firefox profile folder is hidden by default so first make sure you have Windows 7 set to show hidden files and folders ("Start -> Computer -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> Show hidden files, folders, or drives -> OK"). To search for files or folders in a hidden location, click "Start -> Computer" and, in the window that opens, enter the name of the file or folder in the Search Computer box.

Ref:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders#Searching_for_a_file
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Besides places.sqlite you can also look for the bookmarkbackups folder and then restore one of the dated bookmark backups using the instructions here:

Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

Is there any update on this? I did the same, am now searching frantically to find lost bookmarks for gf. Please help guys, I refuse to believe Firefox can remove preferences like that and not have a way to recover them. I never approved an uninstall or that creating of a new default profile, esp. one that would remove prior preferences and profiles. Very disappointing. :(