Firefox refresh lost my tabs, Unreponsive scripts, crashes
Hey guys hope you can help I have Malwarebytes and AVG. Windows 10 few addons adblockplus I was having trouble, lots of open tabs Nearly lost my tabs with a couple of shutdowns decided to add sessionmanager addon which I had used before Soon after I noticed I was getting slow load and problems saying Unresponsive script, continue, debug or stop, seemed to be opening each tab even though FF was set to not open tabs automatically (I had 300ish) in Task manager it seemed like FF was 2GB in memory! The unresponsive scripts slowed everything down and then would crash FF didnt matter which option of the continue debug or stop I picked. In the end I booted FF in safe mode no problems wow. But then I started to get popups (I had adblockplus which was also now disabled) so I realized I couldnt continue like that. So I decided maybe best to remove sessionmanager as I felt that must be the culprit hadnt installed any other addone for a long time before. Rebooted but still unresponsive script, what! Then I thought to try the "refresh" had a little read and I got the impression it said it would save my tabs. Ran it, now no problem BUT now NO TABS either!! I have a few recovery.js files saved, i have the prfoile folder backup too but I seem to be going around in circles I liked my addons. I dont know what caused all the unresponsive script problems but now I figure I should ask for help
I dont now how to trouble shoot the unresp script issues and Id like my tabs back too Hope you guys can help please.
All Replies (4)
Wow, loading 300 tabs at the same time, ouch.
Let's start with the session history file(s). Refresh should have created an Old Firefox Data folder on your desktop, with a semi-randomly-named profile folder inside. Inside there, the sessionstore-backups folder should have the latest set of tabs. Does it seem to have a promising "last modified" time stamp?
The standard "manual swap" method is as follows (assuming Firefox is still running):
(1) From inside Firefox, 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. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.
(2) Scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location, such as your Documents folder. You probably won't need all of them, but...
(3) Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:
- "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
- (menu bar) File > Exit
Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup -- these changes should occur:
- recovery.js is moved from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main level of the profile folder and renamed to sessionstore.js
- recovery.bak is deleted from sessionstore-backups
(4) Once Firefox has stopped updating things, while viewing the main level of the profile folder, rename sessionstore.js to sessionstore.old
(5) Copy in the file you want to restore -- most like the recovery.js from your Old Firefox Data -- and rename it to sessionstore.js -- Windows should show it right next to sessionstore.old in alphabetical order
Note: the file name must be exact. By default, Windows hides the .js file extension. For best results in renaming files, I recommend showing all file extensions. See: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions
(6) Start Firefox and it should read sessionstore.js and restore whatever was in the substitute file; if you do not have Firefox set to restore your previous windows and tabs automatically, use History > Restore Previous Session
Any luck?
Regarding unresponsive scripts, one possible cause is of course the websites and their advertising, but extensions also can be an issue. On Windows 10, the Skype extension(s) might be preinstalled and enabled, for example.
This is our general help article: Warning Unresponsive script - What it means and how to fix it.
Another common cause of unresponsive script errors on Windows 7-10 is the protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin. That feature has security benefits, but seems to have serious compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it using the Add-ons page. Either:
- Ctrl+Shift+a
- "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Plugins. On the right side, find "Shockwave Flash" and click the More link. Then uncheck the box for "Enable Adobe Flash protected mode" and try that for a day to see whether it helps.
Will do this after a few hours sleep jscher2000 thanks
Regarding the unresponsive scripts, i didnt have the problem in safe mode the tabs wern't being loaded and the problem wasnt happening even 10 days ago. Its come on suddenly, I thought it was to do with the session manager addon but after I removed it I still had the same problem
I assume now I can re-add my addons slowly in priority order and see what happens.
I wanted a list of my tabs so I could clean them up but not been able to find an easy way to get it, perhaps reducing my list of tabs by 25% even might help but as I said the same 300 tabs loads up fine in safe mode so Im still unsure.
Will try your suggestions of course but wonder if you wouldnt mind just seeing if what Im saying is making sense? Thanks ;-)
Yes, I think adding one or two extensions at a time is a good approach.
There are scripts in some other threads to extract URLs from your session history file. However, if you can load it into Firefox that would be more efficient (session history files also contain back history for each tab, so extracting all the URLs will give you more than you're looking for). Once it's loaded, you can use the "Bookmark All Tabs" feature to back up your open tabs into Bookmarks.