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Restore open windows and tabs on a crashed computer to a new computer

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my windows 10 20h2 computer crashed 8/29/2021. Firefox was up to date. I built a new computer. I have access to the files off the old hard drive. I have 5 Firefox windows open with over 100 tabs of items I am researching How to I get all the tabs and windows to open in chrome on the new computer? I copied the entire profile directory of files into the new profile folder on the new pc and it still opened only the 1 standard home tab. Since Firefox did not shut down properly I expected the restore pages prompt to come up. Current version of Firefox is 93.0 (64-bit)

my windows 10 20h2 computer crashed 8/29/2021. Firefox was up to date. I built a new computer. I have access to the files off the old hard drive. I have 5 Firefox windows open with over 100 tabs of items I am researching How to I get all the tabs and windows to open in chrome on the new computer? I copied the entire profile directory of files into the new profile folder on the new pc and it still opened only the 1 standard home tab. Since Firefox did not shut down properly I expected the restore pages prompt to come up. Current version of Firefox is 93.0 (64-bit)

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J791634 said

I copied the entire profile directory of files into the new profile folder on the new pc and it still opened only the 1 standard home tab. Since Firefox did not shut down properly I expected the restore pages prompt to come up.

Could you check whether either of these are available (not hidden or grayed out):

  • "3-bar" menu button > History > Restore Previous Session
  • (menu bar) History > Restore Previous Session

If they are missing or grayed, check either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > History > Recently Closed Windows
  • "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows
  • (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows

Note: Each window also has its own Recently Closed Tabs list.


Otherwise, it's a little complicated...

When Firefox starts up, it expects to find a sessionstore.jsonlz4 file in the profile folder, at the main level of the folder, next to sessionCheckpoints.json (if you are viewing the file list in alphabetical order).

If that file is missing, you can expect Firefox to look in the sessionstore-backups folder for recovery.jsonlz4 (or its backup file, recovery.baklz4), which were have the live tabs (or most of them) from the time of the crash. There's also a previous.jsonlz4 in case of need.

What you might do is, after Firefox closes, remove both sessionstore.jsonlz4 and sessionCheckpoints.json, then paste the older set of files into the sessionstore-backups folder for Firefox to find at startup.

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Would you please verify the path of the profile folder?

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I can't tell you what the path is on your computer because it is partly randomized. However, you can find the path to the profile folder on the Troubleshooting Information page from inside Firefox. Either:

  • "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/Return

In the first table on the page, you should find a row for "Profile Folder" It also has an "Open Folder" button to open the profile folder in Windows File Explorer.

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is it %AppData%\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles or %AppData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

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Roaming. The files under the Local path are just temporary stuff you can ignore.