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Tabs are not populated when restored

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I've set the options to automatically restore my previous session, all the previous FF windows open and have the tabs for the previous session but when I click on a tab the window is blank and I must click on the URL and then the green arrow to the right of the URL. With FF v5 the tabs were restored and populated. I've read through all of the related KB articles and have not found anything that resolves the issue.

I've set the options to automatically restore my previous session, all the previous FF windows open and have the tabs for the previous session but when I click on a tab the window is blank and I must click on the URL and then the green arrow to the right of the URL. With FF v5 the tabs were restored and populated. I've read through all of the related KB articles and have not found anything that resolves the issue.

All Replies (3)

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Tabs are not populated when restored:

Does this involve app-tabs, or private browsing?

App-tabs and regular tabs are considered part of browsing history so you must save your browsing history for tabs to be able to be restored. Tools > Options > Privacy you must have "Remember my browsing history" and in Settings where check marks mean to clear things you must leave unchecked "Browsing history". Annotated picture:

You are always restoring (or attempting to restore your previous session), the following paragraph is what most people do though.

To restore your tabs from a previous session you now go through the History menu. But if you want to make the decision to restore tabs when you are closing Firefox see step #31 (#tabslost) read it anyway so you understand what was changed and what your choices are.

If you close Firefox windows before closing Firefox they are not in your session and you could lose app-tabs in this manner. To close Firefox properly use File > Exit or Firefox button > Exit, not the close window button which is the "x" in the upper right corner.


Please mark "Solved" one answer that will best help others with a similar problem -- hope this was it.

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Tabs not populating?

It's possible that your disk cache saving has been disabled, so FF is not saving your web pages.

Open Tools->Options->Advanced There you will see options for changing your cache size. You should give it a reasonable amount. Close that dialog and let's double check that disk caching is not turned off entirely in the FF config file..

Open 'about:config' in the Firefox address bar (promise to be careful) Search for 'browser.cache.disk.enable' from the filter box. Double click on this entry. It will open a dialog box where you can edit the string. Change this value to True and restart Firefox.

Ref: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.disk.enable#false

If this was the answer you were looking for, please click 'Solved' - Thanks.

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You can open the about:config page via the location bar and do a search for browser.sessionhistory.* via the Filter at the top of the about:config page.
You can reset all browser.sessionhistory.* prefs via the right-click context menu to their default values.

Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).