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PLEASE help! I am trying to restore my open tabs which were cleared by a restart (Windows10)!

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Hi, I am seeking a job and had a number of important tabs open when I had to restart my browser. Unfortunately, it was set to clear history on restart. Is there any way, on a windows10 pc, to recover them? Are they stored anywhere?

Hi, I am seeking a job and had a number of important tabs open when I had to restart my browser. Unfortunately, it was set to clear history on restart. Is there any way, on a windows10 pc, to recover them? Are they stored anywhere?

All Replies (4)

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You would need tremendous luck: you would be trying to find a deleted session history file.

Deleted File Recovery

A tool like Recuva can recover some erased files. This could be useful to track down recently removed session history files. The most recent files are likely to be in the best shape. Make sure Windows is set to show hidden files and folders:

The typical files names for session history files are:

  • recovery.jsonlz4
  • recovery.baklz4
  • previous.jsonlz4
  • upgrade.jsonlz4-20201012085804 (the number varies, indicating the "build" that was installed)

Shadow Copies

You can use a utility program to search inside restore points to try to locate an old file that's usable. (Please do NOT try to use the built-in Windows System Restore for this because you probably would lose data.)

(1) Set Windows to show hidden files and folders:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

(2) Download and run one of these two programs:

Within the most recent restore point shown in the program, you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:

\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

(3) Check in the sessionstore-backups folder of each profile for older backups. You can export interesting files to a convenient location such as your currently live desktop.

Any luck? You can use the Scrounger tool on my website check each file's contents:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

After dropping the file onto the box, click Scrounge URLs. If the results are useful, click Save List. If you don't get results within 15 seconds, the tab probably is hanging and you may need to close it and start again.

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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Thank you for answering. So far, the Recuva tool crashes every time I have tried to use it. What is the Scrounger tool? You said it was mentioned earlier in your post, but it was not.

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Whoops, I copied a post that didn't have complete info.

The Scrounger is a tool on my site that you can use to check a .jsonlz4 file's contents and extract the links:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

But first you need the file...

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Note that you can include sessionstore.jsonlz4 in the main profile folder in searching for shadow copies. This file is only present when Firefox is closed.