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Where do I place sessionstore.js that I saved to a hard drive to replace one that was created when I opened Firefox when I got a new computer.

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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My computer crashed so that is unusable but I was able to use the hard drive in it to transfer files to the hard drive of a new computer. I was able to restore my bookmarks but am having trouble with restoring my tabs. Before I updated to Firefox v41 I would simply replace the sessionstore.js file created with my backup hard drive. I tried that and it still shows the few tabs that are on the new computer. I noticed a folder called sessionstore-backups in my profile that has 4 files in it, previous.js, recovery.bak, recovery.js, and upgrade.js-xxxxxxx. Do I replace one of these with my sessionstore.js from my hard drive backup? If not what do I do? It would seem that this should be easy but I have read numerous discussion boards that dont seem to answer this.

My computer crashed so that is unusable but I was able to use the hard drive in it to transfer files to the hard drive of a new computer. I was able to restore my bookmarks but am having trouble with restoring my tabs. Before I updated to Firefox v41 I would simply replace the sessionstore.js file created with my backup hard drive. I tried that and it still shows the few tabs that are on the new computer. I noticed a folder called sessionstore-backups in my profile that has 4 files in it, previous.js, recovery.bak, recovery.js, and upgrade.js-xxxxxxx. Do I replace one of these with my sessionstore.js from my hard drive backup? If not what do I do? It would seem that this should be easy but I have read numerous discussion boards that dont seem to answer this.

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You can find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:

previous.js (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.js from previous session that was loaded successfully)
recovery.js (latest version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
recovery.bak (previous version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
upgrade.js-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.js to replace the current file (make a backup copy of the current sessionstore.js).

See also: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/27/mozilla-launches-improved-session-restore-firefox-33/

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I don't want to copy a file from the sessionstore-backup folder. I had mentioned them in my question so I was aware of their functions. They are all very small files (30-40 KB) since I had got my new computer up and running and haven't done too much web browsing.

The sessionstore.js file from my crashed computer is very (3700KB) large however. So again what do I do to get it into the queue? I put that file from my old computer into the profile folder renamed the old sessionstore.js file and thought that would do the job. I shut down the computer by pressing the power button, then turn it back on, go to Firefox and Firefox still has the few tabs I created and the sessionstore-backup folder still has the 4 small files with a couple of them slightly increasing in size and re-dated. The sessionstore.js file I put in (the 3700KB one) is still there.

The old system was easy to do: find the sessionstore.js file in the profile folder, rename it to something like sessionstore1.js and then put a saved sessionstore.js file from another hard drive into the profile folder. Restart and it would work.

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If you place a valid sessionstore.js file in the current Firefox profile folder then Firefox should restore the session saved in the file. If that isn't the case then it is likely that the file is corrupted.

Did you check the file in a text editor to make sure it only contains ASCII data?

See also Emergency Firefox Session Restore: