Extract links from a crash report? Or access history?
My computer recently crashed and I had some links open which I desperately need to get back. I am not sure how to find them again as they were quite hard to track down in the first place and I made the mistake of not bookmarking them. I thought I would be able to get them back from my history but for some reason when I re-opened Firefox back up it had got rid of all my links that I had open and the history was empty? I tried restoring the places.sqlite using Windows restore but it doesn't seem to have done anything as the links still no longer appear. I deleted and replaced the file with the older version but it doesn't seem to have done anything either.
I was wondering if there was any way to get these links back? They have appeared before in a crash report but I never sent this to Mozilla.
Thanks for any help you can offer
Chosen solution
Let's start by finding and backing up any available session history files to a safe location for potential recovery/salvage operations.
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > 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 "Show Folder" button.
In the window that launches, scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location, such as your Documents folder. If not too much time has passed, we may be able to use them to recover your lost tabs.
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox is closed, your last session)
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?
Note: By default, Windows hides the .js extension. To ensure that you are looking at the files I mentioned, you may want to turn off that feature. This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions
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Chosen Solution
Let's start by finding and backing up any available session history files to a safe location for potential recovery/salvage operations.
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > 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 "Show Folder" button.
In the window that launches, scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location, such as your Documents folder. If not too much time has passed, we may be able to use them to recover your lost tabs.
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox is closed, your last session)
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?
Note: By default, Windows hides the .js extension. To ensure that you are looking at the files I mentioned, you may want to turn off that feature. This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions
Regarding crash reports, is anything listed on the about:crashes page? The following support article has more information about finding crash report information: Firefox crashes - asking for support.
Please don't exit Firefox until you have completed the session file salvage operation.
Thanks so much for your help jscher2000
The dates in my current folder look to all be from today unfortunately. However, I was able to find a potential in recovery.js and recovery.bak that could have what I need by using 'restore previous versions' in Windows. This has the tabs from yesterday at 15:00 which should have the link I need.
Now I have this file - what would you recommend I do to try and get this to open my previous tabs in Firefox?
By the way, regarding the crash reports, I wasn't able to find anything in there unfortunately.
Thanks again for your help. I highly appreciate it.
Success! I was able to open up the recovery.js file in an editor and search for some terms that allowed me to find the link! Wow this has saved me so much time and I am very grateful for your help.
Thank you so much again for the assistance!
For future reference, you can try to replace the current session file with an old one while Firefox is closed, but since you only needed one URL, your way was much easier.