We're sorry to hear that your Firefox seems to be crashing. Please perform the following steps to give us a crash report ID that helps us find out more about the cause of the crash.

1. Enter about:crashes in the Firefox location bar (that's where you enter your website names) and press Enter. You should now see a list of submitted crash reports.
2. Copy the most recent 5 report IDs that you see in the crash report window and paste them into your forum response.

Thanks in advance for your help!

More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Firefox crashes - Troubleshoot, prevent and get help fixing crashes article.

You can check for problems with the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files in the Firefox Profile Folder that store session data.

Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost, so you will have to create them again (make a note or bookmark them).

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_profile_files_created

Question owner

you havent told me how to get my tabs back

this has happened before and now its happened again, less than 3 weeks since last time

seems like a chronic issue w/ ff

Question owner

thank you for the answer

still, ff doesnt crash alot, so thats not the main issue

i need to know how to get my tabs back

What is wrong with the tabs? What info are on the tabs? If it works in safe mode then add-on is causing the issue.

Helpful Reply

all the previous tabs are gone

history menu does not permit restore previous session

If there also no recently closed tabs or windows then I'm afraid that you have lost the tabs from that session unless you have a backup or the sessionstore.js file.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/sessionstore.js

More recent Windows versions can keep older copies of files, but XP doesn't have this feature.

Question owner

suppose sessionstore.js still exists in profile folder, how do i extract my old tabs/session from it?

i opened a new tab and typed in the location bar: about:sessionrestore but the page that came up was blank.

why cant ff keep a permanent, stable record of tabs? its really tedious to locate in history all hundred pages i had tabbed and reopen them manually; but its ridiculous to have to do this every two weeks because ff cant retain the data

this problem started when ff automatically updated to version 19

if i roll back to ff 18 can i restore my old tabs?

how to i roll back the version?

Modified March 19, 2013 12:22:43 AM PDT by wolfblister

Question owner

61eb5cfd-a467-4aa2-afec-d17b972a6c31-browser 3/17/2013 2:52 AM
61eb5cfd-a467-4aa2-afec-d17b972a6c31 3/17/2013 2:51 AM
2c864bee-38c7-46c9-8435-452ee7daa6e2 12/24/2012 6:05 PM
e4bafa1a-65f6-4fcd-ba2f-3818ed53a7ac 12/24/2012 6:04 PM
ed4b7ebd-893b-4d78-b5c2-8781b2736d5f 12/1/2012 12:18 AM
1d1ed91e-87d8-4a1d-b4de-7324c5eef955 12/1/2012 12:17 AM
f0d6d55a-48bc-46ef-94d2-236e8ce59158 11/27/2012 9:28 PM
ea3fe495-8e3f-46a9-9ab5-4699228b73fb 11/27/2012 9:28 PM

Modified March 19, 2013 6:46:30 PM PDT by cor-el

Question owner

why do these options under history menu:

+restore previous session +recently closed tabs +recently closed windows

remain blank and inoperative?

Nice work on finding your crashes. But you need to do one more thing first. Go back to about:crashes and click each link from the date of 3/17/13.

So click these two:

• 61eb5cfd-a467-4aa2-afec-d17b972a6c31-browser 3/17/2013 2:52 AM
• 61eb5cfd-a467-4aa2-afec-d17b972a6c31 3/17/2013 2:51 AM

Clicking these two links will send the crash report to the crash reporter website and then we can view them. They don't auto send them b/c if everyone who used Firefox tried to send their crashes automatically it would overwhelm the system and break the website.

After that go back to about:crashes again and copy the 1st two links and post them here again. The coded numbers changed so we need the new ones. Sorry about that, this is a pain in the ass.

Forget about the rest of the links. They are too old to be helpful to you.

Those options under History menu remain grey and inoperative when there no closed tabs or windows to show or you are in Private Browsing mode. You can tell if you're in Private Browsing mode if the Firefox button at the top of the window is purple. That means Private Browsing is on. If it's orange, that means you're in normal mode.

To learn more about Private Browsing, see:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/private-browsing-browse-web-without-saving-info

But this probably isn't your problem anyway.

Also sorry, going back to a previous version of Firefox will not bring back your tabs. All tabs are saved in 2 files sessionstore.js & sessionstore.bak. The 2nd file is the backup file but it also might be erased. Firefox has a long way to go on correctly backing up tabs. It does not do a good job of this. I think there is plan to a make a backup folder of multiple copies of sessionstore.js so there is a higher chance of restoring tabs. Just like the bookmarkbackups folder.

Modified March 19, 2013 5:42:34 PM PDT by Noah_SUMO

I have a similar problem. Went to about:crashes and I swear there were initially several from April 7 (which would be very helpful) but now the most recent (excepting the very latest, which would not be helpful at all, because it post-dates the problem) are from April 3:

1b479da3-1e2a-4a4f-abf2-9fa6d2207e67-flash2 4/3/2013 3:35 AM
1b479da3-1e2a-4a4f-abf2-9fa6d2207e67-flash1 4/3/2013 3:35 AM
1b479da3-1e2a-4a4f-abf2-9fa6d2207e67-browser 4/3/2013 3:35 AM
1b479da3-1e2a-4a4f-abf2-9fa6d2207e67 4/3/2013 3:35 AM

However, when I follow the links for those reports, I get the throttling message saying that the reports were held back from submission. That seems to be the case for every report (going back to November 1 of last year) except the very latest (which, again, is not helpful, because it post-dates the problem). So, is there any hope of getting my tabs back?

Modified April 12, 2013 5:03:19 AM PDT by cor-el

I've just fixed this very problem by renaming sessionrestore.bak to sessionrestore.js (after deleting the much, much smaller, newer sessionrestore.js)

If you're lucky enough to have sessionrestore.bak sitting in your profile folder after a BSOD while closing Firefox, you too ought to get your tabs back.

Thanks, herbicide! What I have is a large sessionstore.js file from a couple of months ago (at which time most if not all of the relevant tabs would have been open), so is that good for anything, or does it need to be the sessionstore.bak file? Thanks again!

You need a sessionstore.js file to restore the session that is stored in a file.
In case you only have a sessionstore.bak file, you need to rename this file to sessionstore.js
You can check for "History > Recently Closed Tabs/Windows" in case tabs are missing.

You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder

mell_bell sorry I led you in the wrong direction. I thought the poster of this thread was having constant crashes. In that case, the crash reports would've helped see what the problem was. After re-reading, he said Firefox didn't crash alot. So for the record, crash reports will not help you get your tabs back.

But finding your sessionstore.bak file will help after switching it out with sessionstore.js in your Firefox profile folder.

If you have a old sessionstore.js w/ a large size, you can also use that. Just delete the smaller sessionstore.js file while Firefox is closed and then copy and paste the large sessionstore.js file you have there.

Modified April 24, 2013 1:51:38 PM PDT by Noah_SUMO