Restore Session bug - fails after history is cleared
This has happened occasionally in the past, but after the latest Firefox update it's happening almost every time. When I close the browser, I like to clear the history first. Also, before I clear the history, I open a new blank tab and close the old tab, just to make sure all history is cleared. Then, the next time I start the browser, I get that message about not being able to restore the session, the one that starts with "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs."
Same behavior as in this other thread, but I guess I'm supposed to start a new thread. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/959257
I didn't know there's a "clear history when Firefox closes" feature, I've just been doing it all manually.
Chosen solution
What is the startup setting?
- Tools > Options > General > Startup: "When Firefox Starts"
Are you closing the History manually or are you currently using "Clear history when Firefox closes"?
Use "Firefox > Exit" (Windows: Firefox/File > Exit; Mac: Firefox > Quit Firefox; Linux: Firefox/File > Quit) to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox title bar.
The "Well, this is embarrassing..." message means that Firefox didn't close properly the previous time and possibly had crashed.
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Chosen Solution
What is the startup setting?
- Tools > Options > General > Startup: "When Firefox Starts"
Are you closing the History manually or are you currently using "Clear history when Firefox closes"?
Use "Firefox > Exit" (Windows: Firefox/File > Exit; Mac: Firefox > Quit Firefox; Linux: Firefox/File > Quit) to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox title bar.
The "Well, this is embarrassing..." message means that Firefox didn't close properly the previous time and possibly had crashed.
I had the session restore problem as well, I wasn't clearing history before closing Firefox but I do always open a blank tab first. I tried cor-el's suggestion of closing Firefox through File>Exit and not the "X" button, Firefox now properly shows my home page on startup.
"When Firefox Starts" is "Show a blank page". That makes it extra irritating that I'm getting that "can't restore session" -- the browser shouldn't be trying to restore anything.
I clear the history manually using History > Clear Recent History.
I do use the "X" button to exit. I'm very surprised that that's not the same thing as File > Exit ! For most programs it is. I tried exiting through the menu a few times and didn't get the error, so maybe you're on the right track there. I'll keep using the menu for now and see what happens. Thanks for investigating so quickly!
The close X on the title bar closes the current Firefox window.
File > Exit closes the entire program with all open windows and most of the time these methods do the same, but sometimes the close X doesn't work properly causing a hanging Firefox or plugin-container process.
See also:
- "Hang at exit": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs
- "Firefox hangs when you quit it": https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+hangs
I haven't gotten the "Restore Session" error since I changed to using File > Exit instead of the X on the title bar, so I'll call this solved. I'd appreciate it if there's anything you could do to get the developers to look at this, though. This is a pretty vanilla use case and there's no reason for it to produce an error. It was working fine until the latest release.