Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Restored tabs after a crash are very old tabs, not my last session: how to fix this?

  • 10 replies
  • 21 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by deejay007

more options

Whenever Mozilla crashes, which is often, my most recent session is NOT restored!! I get the oops page with 2 options: restore session or start new. I click restore session and instead of bringing me back where I was with the video I was watching that crashed in the middle, it brought me to about 12 videos prior! :-/

Can you guys fix this on your end? Surely it must be a Firefox glitch as this is new of this week: all 3 times my internet has crashed as done this whereas in the past, I'd be restored right where I left off. This is a huge problem: I nearly had ebay automatically purchase the same thing again due to reopening to a purchase page tab that had ALREADY BEEN CLOSED and my newer tabs from session that crashed with all my work (composing at blog or forum posts) are nowhere to be found. HELP, please!

Whenever Mozilla crashes, which is often, my most recent session is NOT restored!! I get the oops page with 2 options: restore session or start new. I click restore session and instead of bringing me back where I was with the video I was watching that crashed in the middle, it brought me to about 12 videos prior! :-/ Can you guys fix this on your end? Surely it must be a Firefox glitch as this is new of this week: all 3 times my internet has crashed as done this whereas in the past, I'd be restored right where I left off. This is a huge problem: I nearly had ebay automatically purchase the same thing again due to reopening to a purchase page tab that had ALREADY BEEN CLOSED and my newer tabs from session that crashed with all my work (composing at blog or forum posts) are nowhere to be found. HELP, please!

All Replies (10)

more options

See the link below for fixing common Session Restore issues, follow all directions, or you will miss something.

more options

Restored tabs after a crash are very old tabs, not my last session: how to fix this?

^^^^that's not addressed at your link

more options

Does Firefox crash a lot for you?

If you have submitted crash reports then please post the IDs of one or more recent crash reports that have a "bp-" prefix:

  • bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

You can find the IDs of the submitted crash reports on the about:crashes page.

  • You can open the about:crashes page via the location bar, like you open a website, or open the crash reports page via "Help > Troubleshooting Information".

See:

If it happens with videos then check for problems with current Flash plugin versions and try these:

  • disable a possible RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension for Firefox and update the RealPlayer if installed
  • disable protected mode in the Flash plugin (Flash 11.3+ on Windows Vista and later)
  • disable hardware acceleration in the Flash plugin

You can check for problems with the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files in the Firefox profile folder that store session data.

Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox profile folder.

Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost and you will have to recreate them (make a note or bookmark them if possible).


You can try this startup setting as that is more reliable.

  • Tools > Options > General > Startup: "When Firefox Starts": *"Show my windows and tabs from last time"
more options

Thank you for reply. No I never submit crash reports. It doesn't crash as often at it used but I often get the "Plug in has crashed" when playing videos yes. I know I have a problem with Adobe Flash latest updates and I can't figure out what's the best way to downgrade back of current latest upgrade; photos are disappearing at certain websites (they'll flash but can't see them unless I go to IE) and other sites clicking the pix albums will completely freezes everything (except the arrow/cursor moves but cannot click anything) to the point where CTRL+ALT+DEL does not work it says "Failure to generate dialog box" and the only way out is to turn off my laptop.

I wanted to reply and say I do not understand this: "Delete the sessionstore.js" and right now it's late my brain can't figure out the rest of your post but I'm hoping to click links Tuesday when I have free to time and I'll understand better. Please don't anybody close this thread. I'll report back where I'm at. Thanks!

more options

Hi! I'm still having the problem with my sessions restored going about a couple hours into the past or 4. Im not sure that's been addressed? Yes I keep having the crashes. I was able to downgrade to a version of Adobe FP that is compatible with Vista but I just experience a crash.. I'm more concerned about recouping my CURRENT session than one that is as far back as 4 hrs old.

Any way to get simple info for that without overwhelming pages to read? Thank you.

more options

PS: although I thank you for sharing, I do not understand any of the following nor where to find such files and seems to risky as I have no idea how to "recreate" them. I can't make things more complicated by having a ton of stuff to read and process on top of my work. This seems to be an internal problem within Mozilla Firefox and not caused by me. Aren't you guys going to fix this major issue? Losing our work in the middle is really not fun! :( Thank you for getting back.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ You can check for problems with the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files in the Firefox profile folder that store session data.

Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox profile folder.

   Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
   http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
   http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_profile_files_created 

Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost and you will have to recreate them (make a note or bookmark them if possible). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

more options

If you experience one or more of the following problems with Firefox 23+:

  • after a crash, Firefox > History > Restore Previous Session does not restore the last session, but restores the session before that one;
  • YouTube videos always start muted,

then try this:

  1. In the Location bar type about:config and press <Enter>.
  2. In the Search box at the top, type browser.sessionstore.
  3. In the resulting grid, double-click on all lines shown in bold, to set their Status to default.
  4. In particular, verify that browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash has been set to true.
more options

This keeps on happening! It just happened today and restored my session from OVER A WEEK AGO, possibly more! This is maddening as I lost a lot of medical related research and other important work! :-/

Deejay007, I just did what you said and I see that the "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash" was already set to true. There is one bold that will not reset itself to default. This is what it reads: browser.sessionsrestore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID Status: user set Type: string and then there'ss a bunch of numbers starting with 2013 which i'm guessing might be a date bu t there's way too many digits to be a date. I see the first few digits might indicate last week, the 12th and maybe a time? It says 20131112160018, what does this mean and how do I configure it to be the very day and minute that it crashes, please?

I double click but there's no auto 'reset to default"; instead a popup shows the 20131112160018 <--numbers. What do I do now, please? Thank you so much everyone for your help!
more options

Please note: the pop up allows me to change those numbers but I have no idea what to replace them by to make it 'restore session to the very date and time it crashed"

more options

Same here. A working solution is the latest version of a Firefox add-on called Session Manager by Michael Kraft. From its homepage :

"Besides the manually saved states, Session Manager automatically stores the current state in case of a crash."

After a crash it asks whether you want to restore the current session (or any of the sessions you manually saved).