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Y bookmarks automatically deleted whenever I try to do anything with them other than selecting, e.g., adding, displaying list? Verified integrity looks OK.

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I first noticed the problem when I tried to add a bookmark. Prior to that, my bookmarks were fully listed under the Bookmarks menu including all of my bookmark folders and their contents and I had no problem clicking on any of the bookmarks. Upon trying to add a bookmark, the dialog box briefly appeared and then disappeared without my clicking on anything or it wouldn't appear at all. Trying again, I quickly switched the category to Bookmarks Menu and a few folders were listed there as usual, but the Folders drop down button wouldn't list any of my folders. I then noticed my bookmarks were being deleted, starting at the subfolder level and then progressing to the top level. Eventually, nothing was listed except some Mobile Bookmarks which included duplicate Firefox bookmarks like Firefox Support and a few odd bookmarks that maybe I added on my phone.

Initially, I thought Sync was my problem because my phone bookmarks were deleted and replaced on my phone as well with the same set of Mobile Bookmarks and the process of deleting my bookmarks was rapid, as though some software like Sync was rapidly cycling through the bookmarks. But turning off Sync and restoring my Profiles folder from my latest (May 8th) full backup did not solve the problem. I turned off my daily backup after I discovered the problem a couple of weeks ago, but I have no idea when the problem started. I have since reinstalled Firefox, copied my backed up Profiles folder, and connected it to the new Firefox and that didn't work. I've also checked the integrity of the backed up Places database once I copied it back to Profiles and it appears OK to me (see the integrity test below). I also tried to restore from a backup using Firefox's Restore utility under Show All Bookmarks, but no bookmarks were listed and, upon selecting Restore, I believe that just showed about 8 restore selections, all of which showed 3K worth of content, much less than my 30,720KB places.sqlite backup, so I didn't do the restore.

I'm at a loss of what to do. I do not see any help online that seems to match my problem. Any ideas?

Here are the results from Verify Integrity:

> Task: checkIntegrity + The database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 30720KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 30720KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 30720KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 16832KiB + pragma_user_version is 43 + pragma_page_size is 4096 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 145636 unique pages + Table moz_bookmarks has 1374 records + Table moz_keywords has 5 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records + Table moz_annos has 2766 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 11 records + Table moz_items_annos has 687 records + Table moz_places has 59490 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 111043 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 19 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 18 records + Table moz_hosts has 5599 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 0 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex > Task: _refreshUI

I first noticed the problem when I tried to add a bookmark. Prior to that, my bookmarks were fully listed under the Bookmarks menu including all of my bookmark folders and their contents and I had no problem clicking on any of the bookmarks. Upon trying to add a bookmark, the dialog box briefly appeared and then disappeared without my clicking on anything or it wouldn't appear at all. Trying again, I quickly switched the category to Bookmarks Menu and a few folders were listed there as usual, but the Folders drop down button wouldn't list any of my folders. I then noticed my bookmarks were being deleted, starting at the subfolder level and then progressing to the top level. Eventually, nothing was listed except some Mobile Bookmarks which included duplicate Firefox bookmarks like Firefox Support and a few odd bookmarks that maybe I added on my phone. Initially, I thought Sync was my problem because my phone bookmarks were deleted and replaced on my phone as well with the same set of Mobile Bookmarks and the process of deleting my bookmarks was rapid, as though some software like Sync was rapidly cycling through the bookmarks. But turning off Sync and restoring my Profiles folder from my latest (May 8th) full backup did not solve the problem. I turned off my daily backup after I discovered the problem a couple of weeks ago, but I have no idea when the problem started. I have since reinstalled Firefox, copied my backed up Profiles folder, and connected it to the new Firefox and that didn't work. I've also checked the integrity of the backed up Places database once I copied it back to Profiles and it appears OK to me (see the integrity test below). I also tried to restore from a backup using Firefox's Restore utility under Show All Bookmarks, but no bookmarks were listed and, upon selecting Restore, I believe that just showed about 8 restore selections, all of which showed 3K worth of content, much less than my 30,720KB places.sqlite backup, so I didn't do the restore. I'm at a loss of what to do. I do not see any help online that seems to match my problem. Any ideas? Here are the results from Verify Integrity: > Task: checkIntegrity + The database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 30720KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 30720KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 30720KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 16832KiB + pragma_user_version is 43 + pragma_page_size is 4096 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 145636 unique pages + Table moz_bookmarks has 1374 records + Table moz_keywords has 5 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records + Table moz_annos has 2766 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 11 records + Table moz_items_annos has 687 records + Table moz_places has 59490 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 111043 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 19 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 18 records + Table moz_hosts has 5599 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 0 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex > Task: _refreshUI

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You can try to move or rename places.sqlite and places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal if present to start with a new places.sqlite file and see if you can restore a backup from the bookmarkbackups folder. You may have to restore an older compressed .jsonlz4 backup.

  • Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup -> Restore

The name of an automatically created JSON bookmarks backup in the bookmarkbackups folder includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once. You also see this count in the Restore menu drop-down list.

  • bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.

If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting and repairing.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.