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ccleaner 4.01 corrupts the bookmarks toolbar in FF 20.0.1

  • 5 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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When I use ccleaner 4.01 and select Download History for Firefox in the Applications tab, that results in corrupting the bookmarks toolbar: all the bookmarks beginning with a certain one (a reference to a local file on this computer) disappear. They're still visible in the bookmarks toolbar section when I show all bookmarks, but from that one bookmark they can't be either deleted or moved; and that bookmark has no properties.

I note that between runs in my tests (uncorrupted vs post-ccleaner corrupted) very few files change, and places.sqlite is one of them. The others seem to me unlikely candidates.

I've filed this as a bug in the ccleaner bug forum, but I wonder if anyone else has encountered it, and if it can be a Firefox bug. Anyone?

When I use ccleaner 4.01 and select Download History for Firefox in the Applications tab, that results in corrupting the bookmarks toolbar: all the bookmarks beginning with a certain one (a reference to a local file on this computer) disappear. They're still visible in the bookmarks toolbar section when I show all bookmarks, but from that one bookmark they can't be either deleted or moved; and that bookmark has no properties. I note that between runs in my tests (uncorrupted vs post-ccleaner corrupted) very few files change, and places.sqlite is one of them. The others seem to me unlikely candidates. I've filed this as a bug in the ccleaner bug forum, but I wonder if anyone else has encountered it, and if it can be a Firefox bug. Anyone?

Chosen solution

Yes, many other users have reported problems after using Ccleaner.

Firefox works fine until it is "cleaned" - not a Bug in Firefox.

I wonder if Ccleaner has changed their program recently to account for changes that Mozilla has recently made to the file system within Firefox.
And if so, are users of Ccleaner using the latest version of that program?


BTW, places.sqlite is where bookmarks and browsing history are stored, And just recently, download history storage was added to the "places" file.

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Chosen Solution

Yes, many other users have reported problems after using Ccleaner.

Firefox works fine until it is "cleaned" - not a Bug in Firefox.

I wonder if Ccleaner has changed their program recently to account for changes that Mozilla has recently made to the file system within Firefox.
And if so, are users of Ccleaner using the latest version of that program?


BTW, places.sqlite is where bookmarks and browsing history are stored, And just recently, download history storage was added to the "places" file.

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As you can see, I've marked the problem "solved", and I thank you for your reply.

I must note, though, that I've been using both ccleaner and Firefox for a very long time, and this is the first such problem I've personally encountered, so I'm inclined to cut ccleaner some slack. (As long as the bug is resolved in a reasonable time, that is.)

Finally: I wonder how one would clear up the corrupt state of the bookmarks. Just restore a previous version? Does that completely rebuild "places"?

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Quote: BTW, places.sqlite is where bookmarks and browsing history are stored, And just recently, download history storage was added to the "places" file.

Note that the Downloads folder has been present in the Library since Firefox 8, so this is not a recent addition.
Only just now that the new Download Manager has been enabled its presence has become noticeable.

As posted above, it is best not to use external programs to cleanup Firefox data, but use built-in means like "Clear history when Firefox closes".

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You may not of had a problem before by using Ccleaner, but this forum and the MozillaZine fora are filled with examples of bad results using Ccleaner with Firefox 4+ versions. Firefox 4.0 was when the *.sqlite databases can into wide spread use in Firefox.

Do you have anything more to lose by trying to restore a backup of your bookmarks? Can't answer how complete a fix that may be, though.

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It is best to delete the places.sqlite file if there is suspect that the file is corrupted.
Firefox will rebuild the bookmarks from a JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder or you can do the restore yourself via one of the other backup.