Hey tonystrad,

One of our top 10 contributors and Moderators (the-edmeister) posted this in 2010 regarding the issue you are having.

Here's what he had to say: There's no "cache" for Favicons. They are saved directly in the places.sqlite file, in your Profile folder, with your bookmarks and browser history. There are a few hidden prefs that deal with Favicons, but those prefs are for the display or not of Favicons in the UI - they shouldn't affect the saving of Favicons in the bookmarks file. It is possible that your places.sqlite file is partially corrupt and is causing that problem, but the "fix" involves deleting that file with Firefox closed, so that when you start Firefox a new places.sqlite file will be created. The downside is that all your browsing history will be gone, and all your saved Favicons will also be gone. The bookmark backup file that is used to restore your bookmarks after deleting that file doesn't backup the Favicons.

From what I have seen with the bookmarks I have saved over the years, like maybe 50% of the websites out there even have Favicons and some websites don't follow the established standards for Favicons. The Favicon may appear in the URL bar and on a Tab, but Firefox won't save it because the Favicon image is the wrong format or it's hidden in a remote file and Firefox can't save it when the bookmark is used for the first time.

Also, if you are in the Private Browsing mode, Firefox won't save the Favicon. http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Private+Browsing

Try his solution then report back to us.

Do you see the favicon on the tab if you visit one of those sites?

Normally Firefox should fetch the favicon from the server if you click a bookmark to visit this link.

You can check these prefs on the about:config page to make sure that they have the default value.

• browser.chrome.favicons
• browser.chrome.site_icons

Try to let all favicons expire to see if that makes Firefox to store properly them once again.

Developer;Ctrl+Shift+J) and press the Enter key.
var fS = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/favicon-service;1"]
         .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIFaviconService);
fS.expireAllFavicons();

(note that this will remove all favicons, so you need to open a bookmark to make Firefox retrieve the favicon)

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

Note that your System Details List shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize some prefs on each start of Firefox.

The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created it, so normally it wouldn't be there. you can check its content with a plain text editor if you didn't create this file yourself.

The user.js file is read each time you start Firefox and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

You can delete the prefs.js file and possible numbered prefs-##.js and user.js files to reset all prefs to the default value or reset these prefs to the default value via the right-click context menu on the about:config page or edit the prefs.js file and remove related line(s).

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved