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I need to recover a closed window

  • 1 reply
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

wakeangel2001
wakeangel2001
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Firefox malfunctioned, not allowing me to click between tabs, so I closed the window (I had 3 open at the time) and tried to use the recently closed window feature to restore it, but that option wasn't working! Instead of showing me my last closed window it only opened up a tiny square barely bigger than a pixel. I quit out firefox and restarted my computer twice trying to get it to work again, and for some reason it decided to start working again, but by that time it was recalling a couple of windows I had opened since then while trying to fix this. I was only able to save 2 of my 3 windows. I've not closed any more windows since I realized I lost that last one, and I saved the session restore files onto my desktop because someone with a similar problem was told to do so. There are 2 of them, one is simply sessionrestore.bak, and the other one is sessionstore.bak-20140923175406 can my third window (which had close to 100 tabs in it) be saved?

Firefox malfunctioned, not allowing me to click between tabs, so I closed the window (I had 3 open at the time) and tried to use the recently closed window feature to restore it, but that option wasn't working! Instead of showing me my last closed window it only opened up a tiny square barely bigger than a pixel. I quit out firefox and restarted my computer twice trying to get it to work again, and for some reason it decided to start working again, but by that time it was recalling a couple of windows I had opened since then while trying to fix this. I was only able to save 2 of my 3 windows. I've not closed any more windows since I realized I lost that last one, and I saved the session restore files onto my desktop because someone with a similar problem was told to do so. There are 2 of them, one is simply sessionrestore.bak, and the other one is sessionstore.bak-20140923175406 can my third window (which had close to 100 tabs in it) be saved?

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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sessionstore.bak isn't used for quite some time and the version you have is from 2014 as you can see by the appended time stamp (20140923175406), so that like won't help.

Use one of these to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox title bar to avoid losing open windows.

  • "3-bar" menu button > Exit (Power button)
  • Windows: File > Exit
  • Mac: Firefox > Quit Firefox
  • Linux: File > Quit

Firefox uses the sessionstore.js file in the profile folder to store session data, but this file is only present when Firefox is closed. The sessionstore.js file is created from recovery.js when you close Firefox and is removed and copied to previous.js when you start Firefox to make is possible to restore the session at any time.

Backup the session files in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox Profile Folder to make sure not to lose possible important session data. Do NOT close Firefox when Firefox is already running.

You will normally 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: