By mistake I closed the window and can't recover the open tabs
So everyday I close FF with the task manager, to keep my open tabs for the next day (probably my 1st mistake). I've never had any issues with this. An IT from workplace had told me it was a terrible idea, so I can't say I wasn't warned. He never said why though! Today when I started FF and it displayed the last session and asked me if I wanted to restore it, I noticed an extremely high usage of the memory. Nothing was opened but that only window and it was using over 2 MB, it's never ever happened before. I googled it, I noticed it was happening to other people (I have windows 7 home premium and use a Sony Vaio laptop), I tried downgrading to a previous FF version, it didn't help, it was still using those 2 and up to 2.8 MB, without even displaying anything. Finally in this forum a user said that using the the latest version: 59.0.2 was the only thing that saved him. So I updated it again. I'm not certain how many times I closed the window using the task manager, but eventually when i reopened it, instead of offering the previous session, it only offered the home page and no way to recover the previous session. I typed this in the search button: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and it opened what I believe is the profile? I'm not familiar AT ALL with it. I went to the sessionstore-backups folder (after reading a little bit in here about what steps to take) and to my despair I only found in there a few files, all of them really small, sadly and with really old dates! I was hoping to find at least 2 or 3 with today's date, but there are only two: recovery.jsonlz4 (time 7:45 PM) and recovery.baklz4 (same: 7:45 PM). II have no idea even if those files are the ones I should be searching for and even if they were, what to do with them. I should be specific about this though, the session I closed by mistake with the task manager, that was displaying the windows and listing the tabs so that I'd select which ones to open and such, I closed way *earlier* than 7:45, that's when I closed the 'home' page, which was empty, Btw this might be important. When trying to recover this missing session I read that there was the option to set Firefox to show windows and tabs from last time and I enabled it, maybe that's what messed the whole thing up. I have no idea what to do or even how to search for information cause I guess it's a bit too specific. And I have no idea what was going on earlier today with this ridiculous CPU usage by FF or if it's related at all to what happened (I disabled addons, and no use). Now that there's only that one tab open (Google as a home page) it shows normal usage. So strange. Please let me know if there's anything that I could do, I'm desperate! I had tons of open tabs and I wish I could recover them. I'm hoping my ignorance when it comes to FF, programming and computers are getting the best of me and it's not as bad as I think it is. I'm using Chrome as I'm typing this. I opened FF again so that I could post this using it so it can see the plugins, addons and stuff, but it makes me so sad to look at it, I can't. Besides I wasted the whole afternoon 1st trying to fix that horrible memory thing and now with the lost session, I can't. Active addons are ABP (which I blamed for the CPU usage, but disabled it and was the same) and a Google translate addon. Any help will be deeply appreciated. Sorry for the broken English, I speak in Spanish but figured I might be luckier posting in English cause more people understand this language!
All Replies (11)
Ok I must have done something wrong. I tried to drag and drop the recovery.jsonlz4, the file that's located in the April 7th folder, using the Shadow Explorer but maybe that's not what I was supposed to do, cause nothing happened. I tried twice, and I'm so afraid of ruining my only chance to recover something I don't dare to try again. Please let me know if I'm mistaken causeI dunno how to continue. I'm not certain how to hide the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file and the sessionstore-backups folder from the current FF session. I suppose I should rename them? But I'm not certain if I should simply copy+paste the whole sessionstore-backups folder from April 7th into the current FF profile, to replace it. Seems I'm missing something in this part:
recovery.jsonlz4 is moved from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main level of the profile folder and renamed to sessionstore.jsonlz4 recovery.baklz4 is deleted from sessionstore-backups
I'm so sorry, I really dunno if I can do this, I'm lost.
Does Shadow Explorer let you right-click > Copy the file and then right-click > Paste it into a "real" folder or onto the desktop? If not, perhaps you need to highlight the file and find an Extract or Copy or other button to bring it back to Windows.
jscher2000 said
Does Shadow Explorer let you right-click > Copy the file and then right-click > Paste it into a "real" folder or onto the desktop? If not, perhaps you need to highlight the file and find an Extract or Copy or other button to bring it back to Windows.
Yeah, it says Export... and then it opens the desktop folder, so I could select where to export it to!
intr0uble said
Yeah, it says Export... and then it opens the desktop folder, so I could select where to export it to!
Okay, so once it's in a convenient location, you'll be able to right-click>Copy, right-click>Paste it into the Firefox profile folder.
jscher2000 said
intr0uble saidYeah, it says Export... and then it opens the desktop folder, so I could select where to export it to!Okay, so once it's in a convenient location, you'll be able to right-click>Copy, right-click>Paste it into the Firefox profile folder.
I exported the recovery.jsonlz4, however I'm not sure that's the file I'm supposed to copy! Is that the one? And where should I copy it exactly and not changing its name?
Okay, I'll paste the steps from the other post I linked to before, with a few minor changes.
The general strategy for restoring an old session history file is:
(A) Identify the file you want to use from your backup -- you already did this step
(B) After exiting Firefox, hide the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file and the sessionstore-backups folder from your latest session
(C) Set up the old file in the profile folder as sessionstore.jsonlz4 or, for older .js files, sessionstore.js, then start Firefox and Restore Previous Session
For (B) and (C), in more detail:
(1) From inside Firefox, open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch a Windows Explorer window listing the various files and folders in your profile.
(2) Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:
- "3-bar" menu button > "power" button Exit
- (menu bar) File > Exit
Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup -- these changes should occur:
- recovery.jsonlz4 is moved from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main level of the profile folder and renamed to sessionstore.jsonlz4
- recovery.baklz4 is deleted from sessionstore-backups
Once Firefox has stopped updating things, while viewing that main level of the profile folder:
(3) right-click > Rename the sessionstore-backups folder to sessionstore-backupsOLD so Firefox doesn't try to use those files (it will create a new one)
(4) right-click > Rename the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file to sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4
If you see an older sessionstore.js or sessionstore.bak file, move it somewhere else or delete it.
(5) Copy the old file you want to use [recovery.jsonlz4] and paste it into the current profile folder (please don't move the original in case this takes multiple tries)
(6) right-click > Rename recovery.jsonlz4 to sessionstore.jsonlz4
(7) Start Firefox and it should read the swapped in sessionstore file and restore whatever was in the substitute file; if you do not have Firefox set to restore your previous windows and tabs automatically, use Restore Previous Session.
Success?
I was having dinner, sorry! I'm back. Either I'm doing something wrong, or what happened yesterday messed up the profile so much that something that's supposed to happen, doesn't happen. This part, after exiting FF before doing any change in the current session:
recovery.jsonlz4 is moved from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main level of the profile folder and renamed to sessionstore.jsonlz4 recovery.baklz4 is deleted from sessionstore-backups
It doesn't occur. Meaning inside the sessionstore-backups folder there is a file called recovery.jsonlz4, although on the main profile folder there is indeed a file called sessionstore.jsonlz4. They both exist at the same time, I'm not certain it was supposed to happen. And the recovery.baklz4 is not deleted from sessionstore-backups folder. That's what's confusing me! I checked with the task manager to make sure FF wasn't open somehow and I couldn't see it, but it's not there, it's closed. Should I give a try either way? I mean in spite those files being inside that folder, considering I'm supposed to rename it anyway, maybe it's indifferent, I'm just worried cause it's very specific saying those files shouldn't be there, however they are!
I don't know why those files are still there. That doesn't make sense to me. However, you are going to hide that entire folder, so I don't think we should worry about it.
jscher2000 said
I don't know why those files are still there. That doesn't make sense to me. However, you are going to hide that entire folder, so I don't think we should worry about it.
I did it and it worked perfectly!!! Now I'm in a rush to close old useless tabs. I hope I won't bug you again with so many questions, I'm so sorry, you'v been an incredible help!!!!!!!!!!! So grateful
I'm really glad you were able to dig out the old file. I'm not sure we'll ever know why the fresh files disappeared from your current profile. But maybe you could make backups of the sessionstore-backups folder from time to time so if you ever need to do this again, it will go more quickly.
jscher2000 said
I'm really glad you were able to dig out the old file. I'm not sure we'll ever know why the fresh files disappeared from your current profile. But maybe you could make backups of the sessionstore-backups folder from time to time so if you ever need to do this again, it will go more quickly.
Will definitely do!! Many many thanks ♥