Starting a few days ago, about 75% of the time I open my browser, the option to restore the previous session is there but history is not. I have my preferences set to era… (read more)
Starting a few days ago, about 75% of the time I open my browser, the option to restore the previous session is there but history is not. I have my preferences set to erase all history upon closing the browser. It never did this before. However, it is inconsistent. Sometimes, when I click on it, my start page reloads and "restore previous session" disappears. Other times, my previous tabs open up if I click on it. If I close the browser and open it two to four times, "restore previous session" finally disappears. I have my preferences set to erase everything when I close Firefox but a few times, not only was “restore previous session” available but my history was not erased. I have checked those preferences repeatedly.
The day this started, I did extensive web searches to find a solution. I entered about:config and set the crash recovery to False, as recommended (browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash). Obviously, this did not solve the problem. Earlier today, I went to Show Folder in Troubleshooting and deleted two prefs.js files that Mozilla recommended to get rid of when preferences won't stick. After I did this, I opened my browser on about four occasions and "restore previous session" did not appear. I thought I had fixed the problem. Nope. Just now, I had a terrible shock. "Restore previous session" was there again and when I clicked on it, it loaded my Gmail Inbox, which I had definitely signed out of earlier. I wasn't even prompted to log in.
I can understand it giving me the login page for Gmail but to open up my Inbox is horrifying! I do three malware and virus scans on my PC every day. I recently did a special scan that said my PC was not vulnerable to being hacked and had good security.
I just checked that Show Folder and there is a new file that was not there four hours ago: prefs.js. The other two that I deleted earlier today are still in my Recycle Bin so I could restore them. They are: prefs-1.js and prefs.js I have not deleted any more prefs.js files. The Mozilla help page said Firefox might create a new prefs.js file if it needs it. So why tell us to delete it to stop this annoying problem?
After I deleted the prefs.js files, I went into Privacy to make sure my settings were okay. As I said, I had no problem the first three or four times I opened the browser after both deleting the prefs.js files and checking my preferences. This new issue with it opening my Gmail Inbox happened just now. By the way, a while back, I deleted (but still have it in the Recycle Bin) a user.js file to stop web addresses from remaining in the Location bar after closing my browser. If this were the problem, I would have had this issue a long time ago, not in the last few days.
I refreshed Firefox, reset my preferences, and this did not fix the problem. I made sure the browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash was still set to False. I also set my privacy level from 0 to 2 with about:config (browser.sessionstore.privacy_level). I lost the link of where I read to do this.
I am absolutely fed up with this. Why doesn’t Firefox just make it simple and give us the option of shutting off the restore feature if we want to? Obviously, if you set it to Private Browsing, this prevents the restore previous session option from appearing. However, it means that you have no history while browsing and this is not something I want. I have to have my history as I refer to it all the time. The only thing I can think of to prevent anyone from seeing my browsing and history but to have my history available as I’m browsing is to clear everything but cookies under Clear Recent History. Ridiculous!
Just now, I checked and the crash configuration was back to True. I set it to False again. It seems, all of a sudden, I can’t get any settings to take hold in Firefox.