Firefox has completely wiped my profile. Not left old data anywhere. Help!

Xplo · 28 Jan 2017 at 20:26

So.....

I had a random BSOD the other day whilst browsing the web on Firefox. Only recently over Xmas dialled in some OC settings on my 6700k (was 8 hour Realbench stable!) and this is the first crash/BSOD/instability etc i've had since, so was strange, but anywho didn't think much of it, just booted into bios and tweaked the voltage up a little more to be extra sure.

Upon getting back into windows and firing up firefox, and navigating to 'restore previous session' to my horror it was blanked out, i then noticed i didn't have any browsing history at all, i then noticed that all my toolbars and add-ons were also gone, and then finally, i noticed all my bookmarks (i had well over 200!) are now all gone too!

So Firefox has completely reset itself back to standard. I can't figure out why or how it's done this just because of a BSOD.

Anywho i have been googling like mad the last couple days as surely there are redundancies in place so data can be recovered. However i think the all important 'Old Firefox Data' folder i cannot find anywhere!

Where do i stand with this, and where should i begin? Anybody had any similar in the past and if so any tips?

jpaul · 28 Jan 2017 at 21:38

presumably ther is no ambiguity on the profile you are using - you have checked the likes of
C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

and there are not several ? - maybe it has started you on a fresh one, for some unknown reason.

within them, as doubtless you have seen it is, the places.sqlite and bookmarkbackup that principally count, archive the profiles if there is anything left, as there are tools to open the .sqlite databases and which maybe more fault tolerant than FF.

KIA · 29 Jan 2017 at 21:46

In the words of bledd, restore from backup...

Seriously, get one sorted before something like this happens again.

Xplo · 29 Jan 2017 at 22:16

I do have a backup, but silly me its couple motnhs old now and quite a lot has changed. System restore from a couple days prior keeps telling me it cant complete aswell :angry:

Ace Modder · 29 Jan 2017 at 22:28

doesn't FF have cloud auto syncing? Chrome does, I'd switch to Chrome if I were you.

Good luck getting them back.

opethdisciple · 29 Jan 2017 at 22:41

firefox.exe -profilemanager

Type that in to the run command You might find you have a profile there.

KIA · 31 Jan 2017 at 21:26

Xplo said:
I do have a backup, but silly me its couple motnhs old now and quite a lot has changed. System restore from a couple days prior keeps telling me it cant complete aswell :angry:

Schedule one to run at least once a day, and setup email notifications. Run a test restore at least every three months.

Recommended applications:

Macrium Reflect
Duplicati
Syncovery

Orcvader · 31 Jan 2017 at 22:15

Ace Modder said:
doesn't FF have cloud auto syncing? Chrome does, I'd switch to Chrome if I were you.

Good luck getting them back.

Only if you made a Firefox account and signed in, much like Chrome requires a Google account for syncing.

As above did you check the appdata folder to see if the profile folder is still there?