PS:

And now my entire FF Bookmarks folders have been wiped again. Blank of all bookmarks.

What on earth is going on? Anybody?

Hi Peter, let's return to the question of the health of your Places database.

First, if you haven't already, please do a normal shutdown and/or restart of your system. Restarting Windows can help by freeing up locked files, completing any deferred updates, and resolving temporary file permission issues.

Next, if Firefox still has bookmark problems, could you let us know what you get when you run the "Verify Integrity" diagnosis and repair function. That's here:

Open Firefox's Troubleshooting Information page using any of these methods:

• "3-bar" menu button > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

Near the bottom, there is a section titled Places Database -- that's the file which stores history and bookmarks. Click the button labeled Verify Integrity. There may be a 10-15 second delay before results appear.

If all is well, the report that appears below the button should start with:

> Task: checkIntegrity
+ The places.sqlite database is sane
+ The favicons.sqlite database is sane
> Task: invalidateCaches
+ The caches have been invalidated
> Task: checkCoherence
+ The database is coherent

Does yours say that, or something else? You can select and copy the report, and then paste it into a reply for review and comment.

Thanks again for a swift response!

Ok, so I went through the steps as regards "Verify Integrity" again, as you outlined, and the results are somewhat differerent from yesterday's check ...

(Oh, and I had "switched the machine off and on again" as the saying goes - with a proper Restart, though - and no change to the absence of Bookmarks. Hence the Verify Integrity check, next option.)

Just to add, I have compiled and trimmed the edges of the full list of V.I. results down the page, and added the top of (shown) Statistics, in case anything further down may be significant ...

Would be glad if you can shed any light!

Okay, it looks like the Places database doesn't have any data in it. Can you try restoring the last automatic bookmark backup. See the following article: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer.

I am troubled that Verify Integrity did not list the moz_bookmarks table AT ALL. If Restore doesn't work, it might be necessary to again remove the places.sqlite file and have Firefox try again to rebuild it. The following article has the steps:

Fix "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional" error message - but no need to rename/remove favicons.sqlite since that one seems okay?

So, the first didn't work.

I got to the usual

Library > Import and Backup > [dropdown] Restore > Choose File

but clicking through to the latter, it simply opened a possible folder under my "Documents" - there was no access offered to any Bookmarks backup files.

I could I suppose navigate from "Choose File" to one of my old manual Bookmarks backups (actually a collection from 2022, though file dated April 2025 because that is when I last dealt with it) - but my concern is, if I try loading an old Bookmarks file in place of the disappeared file, I will exclude any chance of a reappearance of the up-to-date Bookmarks file (as happened this morning, as described!), and thereby definitively lose a whole lot of subsequent page saves ....

Well anyway, before I do anything drastic on those lines, let me look into your second posted response - both much appreciated. .....

The second approach - though I see how to navigate through to the key steps/clicks, looks a bit of a complex gamble for my simple brain, i.e. to that brain at least, looks potentially fraught with the same perils as described in my post before this.

Namely, if I choose to try to have my (until this week) current Bookmarks folders & files automatically reconstructed by FF - rather like (though this is a different method) deciding to overwrite my Bookmarks files and folders as of Sept 2025 with some ancient predecessor - I might well be be waving tons of data/references down the Suwannee for ever ...

The phrase you used which waved the jittery flag for me is "have Firefox *TRY** again to ...."!

• my emphasis (!)

So I think I will put these steps on hold, with thanks for all your assistance & guidance. And hope the magic reappearance re0ccurs. (I do not understand the new instability, of FF and/or my devices.)

If after a day or two, nothing stirs, I will attempt your Method 2.

And should the automatic rebuild attempt not produce success, there is Method 1 - uploading a smaller, older set of Bookmarks.

(If all that fails, since I sort of rely on Bookmarks, maybe FF is no longer for me!!)

Thanks again!

So, the first didn't work. I got to the usual Library > Import and Backup > [dropdown] Restore > Choose File but clicking through to the latter, it simply opened a possible folder under my "Documents" - there was no access offered to any Bookmarks backup files.

None of your recent automatic backups are listed on the Restore menu? Those would be listed by date and item count above the Choose File item. If there are no backups, could you check whether your Firefox started up in the wrong profile? See: Recover user data missing after Firefox update.

Also, if there are no backups, Firefox won't have anything to use to rebuild the Places database, so pause on that suggestion.

I fear I am (technically) getting out of my depth at this stage.

But pluckily following your guidance, I find I have 2 Profiles aside from the ("undeletable") one first up. > Attachment 1.

Following through "Launch Profile" as directed on the pages you refer me to, there is nothing to be found on either, any more than on the current one. See Attachment 2.

Perhaps I do have to just sit back and hope for the miracle to reoccur as it did earlier this morning ... and that the Bookmarks magically return again - but to stay this time ...?

I dunno. I can't follow what is going on, what may have happened.

Thanks anyway!

The way your profile is named (with 1757539058267 at the end) implies that Firefox performed a Refresh* on the profile on Wednesday afternoon. Do you have an Old Firefox Data folder on your system desktop with data from around that time?

*This kind of Refresh: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings.

If you have that folder, you can try using files from its bookmarkbackups subfolder to restore that last set of bookmarks to your current Firefox profile.

Thanks again ...

Following through those steps, I see there is such a folder on my Desktop...

however, clicking through on that folder brings me to the same old blank conclusion (see Atts in sequence, 1-4/4 - those numbers, as well as all underlining and arrows, added by me obvs).

So I don't get it (in every sense).

Four notes I think worth adding (!):

1) Yes, I do remember deliberately asking FF to Refresh on Wed 10 Sept.

After loss of all Bookmarks & Bookmarks toolbar etc. ... FF reassured me it would not materially/essentially damage data if I chose to Refresh when there was a problem with it, although I would have to re-install Extensions & such - which was fine by me, a price worth paying for restoration of my Bookmarks & all reference points in FF, as I hoped. ... "Good grief, Charlie Brown" ...

2) "Old FF Data" contains another Autosave from 2023, you will see in Att.2. Those are the ancient Bookmarks from 2022 that I mentioned (which I also saved manually in 2023 and accessed this April, looking for a few old saves - wish I'd taken the same precaution and done the same extra manual save (despite reassurance!) this time. I was frazzled and under pressure that day .... & by default, "trusted the machine" ...)

3) I really don't understand how all my Bkmrks, my Bkmrks toolbar & its quick-access items etc returned - briefly, as it transpired - on Friday morning (UK morning), and also how they all vanished again later that same day .... what on earth ...?

4) I am now accessing your responses via Chrome, email and into browser, then cutting and pasting the referred web address back into FF. This is because FF allows me no references and has somehow taken away all my Bookmarks, so as things stand I cannot quick-reference any pages in FF. (I did also take the route of saving the address of this article in a new plain text file - but using email/Chrome is quicker.) Am I now stuck with Chrome or (worse) Edge, Opera or summat?! :D I always liked FF, but...

Oh, it sounds like you ran the Refresh after the problem started. Which makes sense, why would you do it otherwise, but by then the data had gone missing. I really can't understand why you don't have any bookmark backups. There is a preference to adjust the number of backups, which allows reducing them to zero, but I don't know why anyone would do that. Perhaps the backup function broke a long time due to some database problem, but even if Firefox couldn't make fresh backups, some of the old ones would normally be there. It's very puzzling.

Could you open the Windows Recycle Bin (you can search recycle in the system search box) and then search for files matching the pattern

bookmarks*.jsonlz4

to see whether any of the files ended up in there? The creation date and number of items is coded into the name, which could be useful in deciding which ones to right-click > Restore. For example:

bookmarks-2025-09-09_8216_I1UHm3NVI1jF8I0j3Vg7cDAIWXUMAj8zLU1T6Z1mbNg=.jsonlz4

Note that the restore could go to a deleted folder that Windows will need to create, so check the path before restoring so you know where to look for it.

As for why the bookmarks might have returned briefly, I think you already ruled out the possibility that it was in a different profile. So that leaves Sync as the other possibility. When you sign Firefox in to your Mozilla Account, Firefox automatically syncs bookmarks with your other Firefox installations connected to the same account. You may want to check the other devices in the account to see whether something peculiar might be happening there: https://accounts.firefox.com/settings#connected-services