Hi kryzchn, sorry to hear about this problem. Do you have the Old Firefox Data folder on your desktop? The Refresh should have moved all your old Firefox settings/data into that folder.

What was the reason for using Refresh; was it a severe problem? If it was more of a tune-up, then one option would be to "undo" the Refresh. There isn't an actual one-click undo, but here is a procedure to revert to your pre-Refresh data. It takes 5 minutes, but that may be faster than recovering individual files and loading those into your new profile.

Overview

These are the steps described in more detail below:

1. Create a new Firefox profile folder
2. Remove everything from that new profile folder
3. Copy in everything from the old profile folder

Create a New Profile

Inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

Click the Create a New Profile button, then click Next. Assign a name like OldSettings, ignore the option to relocate the profile folder, and click the Finish button.

After creating the profile, scroll down to it and click the Set as default profile button below that profile, then scroll back up and click the Restart normally button. (There are some other buttons, but please ignore them.)

Firefox should exit and then start up using the new profile, which will just look brand new. Please ignore any tabs enticing you to connect to a Sync account or to activate extensions found on your system as we are going to flush these settings anyway.

Open the New Profile folder in Windows Explorer

Open the Troubleshooting Information page using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• Help menu > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table, click the "Open Folder" button. Firefox will launch your brand new profile folder in Windows Explorer.

Leaving that folder open, switch back to Firefox, and Exit using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• (menu bar) File > Exit

When Firefox closes, the profile folder should be front and center, or you can activate it using the Task bar.

Copy Old Data in Place of New

In that new profile folder you just popped open -- NOT the one on your desktop -- select all the contents (you can use Ctrl+a) and delete (you can press the Delete key on the keyboard).

Leaving that window open, open or switch over to your Old Firefox Data folder. Drill down into your old profile folder. At this level you should see a folder named bookmarkbackups among other things.

Select everything (Ctrl+a) and Copy (either right-click > Copy or Ctrl+c).

Switch to the empty new profile folder in other window and Paste (either right-click > Paste or Ctrl+v). This may take a minute since some of the files are large.

Start Firefox

Firefox should start up in that "new" profile with the resurrected old profile data. Success?

Thanks for your reply.. I am going through the process you described now.. how do I "Open the New Profile folder in Windows Explorer" ?

kryzchn said

Thanks for your reply.. I am going through the process you described now.. how do I "Open the New Profile folder in Windows Explorer" ?

Go ahead with the steps below that bold heading. That's where the details are.

..so I clicked "open folder" but Firefox didn't launch in Explorer.. it just opened the directory - in "C:\Users\christiaan\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6ps357ur.OldSettings

also, what do you mean exactly by this? -

"In that new profile folder you just popped open -- NOT the one on your desktop..."

i.e. what new profile folder?

That is your new profile folder, the one ending with OldSettings. You're in the right place.

ok thanks but can you please address my previous question re. "open folder" not launching in Explorer

kryzchn said

ok thanks but can you please address my previous question re. "open folder" not launching in Explorer

I believe the button always opens the folder in Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) unless your system has a different program for viewing files and folders.

oh yes, I had my explorers mixed up.. sorry, I'm not very computer literate.. I don't quite understand this process..

"Copy Old Data in Place of New In that new profile folder you just popped open -- NOT the one on your desktop -- select all the contents (you can use Ctrl+a) and delete (you can press the Delete key on the keyboard). Leaving that window open, open or switch over to your Old Firefox Data folder. Drill down into your old profile folder. At this level you should see a folder named bookmarkbackups among other things.

can you please clarify this as I don't know how to "drill down into old profile folder"

Leaving that window open, open or switch over to your Old Firefox Data folder. Drill down into your old profile folder. At this level you should see a folder named bookmarkbackups among other things.

I think I found them with windows icon + R but I am worried my old bookmarks, tabs etc. have been overwritten because there are no file sizes

kryzchn said

can you please clarify this as I don't know how to "drill down into old profile folder"

Double-click into Old Firefox Data. Then double-click into the profile folder (has a random name like a1b23cd4.default) inside.

kryzchn said

I think I found them with windows icon + R but I am worried my old bookmarks, tabs etc. have been overwritten because there are no file sizes

Change to the details view, with columns for date and size. I don't remember how to do that on Windows 10, but on earlier windows, there's a button that cycles between thumbnails, lists without details, and details view.

bookmarkbackups file is empty

What is the modified date-time on the places.sqlite file? That's the file which stores your history and current bookmarks. You're looking for it to be very shortly before the Refresh.

ok so yes, the modified-date time for the 3qslt1ds.default file is just before the refresh

Okay, so copy/paste everything from the 3qslt1ds.default folder to the 6ps357ur.OldSettings folder. Then when you start Firefox, it should find the copied-in files.

I copied / pasted file as suggested but no old tabs, history appears after re-opening firefox :(

my old bookmarks have reappeared but no browsing history, tabs etc.

is there a way to open the "sessionstore-backup" JSONLZ4 file from my OldFirefoxData which I assume is restore session with all my old tabs

Were either of these are available (not hidden or grayed out):

• "3-bar" menu button > Restore Previous Session
• (menu bar) History > Restore Previous Session

If they were missing or grayed, check either:

• "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows (and within each restored window, Recently Closed Tabs)
• (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows (and within each restored window, Recently Closed Tabs)

If that doesn't help...

You can convert any of the files in the sessionstore-backups folder (for example, recovery.jsonlz4), or the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file (if it exists) to a list of clickable links using a tool on my website. Drag and drop the onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html