I'm very concerned because all of a sudden the new tabs that show when Firefox usually open are remaining as new tabs and are not showing the many sites I had.
I was having no problems and it happened all of a sudden. I have no file named sessionstore with any extension. Was there an update today?
All Replies (7)
Sorry to hear that. Users report that from time to time, and I'm not aware that the cause of it has been identified. Let's quickly try to salvage and back up files that you might still have. Do not close Firefox until doing this.
Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing your current settings files.
(1) Scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Copy all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
(2) Go back up to the main level and scroll down to the sessionstore file(s). sessionstore.bak might be obsolete, but do you see any other files whose names start with sessionstore? If so, copy them to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
By default, Windows hides the .js extension. To work with files most accurately, you may want to turn off that feature. This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- sessionstore.js: the windows and tabs from your previous Firefox session (created when Firefox closes)
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session, after Firefox starts; sessionstore.bak for pre-33 versions of Firefox
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update; sessionstore.bak-datetime for pre-33 versions of Firefox
If you come up with something promising, you may be able to have Firefox use it for your next session. Do any of the dates/times look promising?
For suggested next steps, see this thread, but bear in the mind the file name changes in Firefox 33 and later when trying to apply it: previously opened tabs open empty as New tab.
jscher2000 said
Sorry to hear that. Users report that from time to time, and I'm not aware that the cause of it has been identified. Let's quickly try to salvage and back up files that you might still have. Do not close Firefox until doing this. Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using eitherIn the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing your current settings files. (1) Scroll down and double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Copy all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder. (2) Go back up to the main level and scroll down to the sessionstore file(s). sessionstore.bak might be obsolete, but do you see any other files whose names start with sessionstore? If so, copy them to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
By default, Windows hides the .js extension. To work with files most accurately, you may want to turn off that feature. This article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- sessionstore.js: the windows and tabs from your previous Firefox session (created when Firefox closes)
- recovery.js: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session
- recovery.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- previous.js: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session, after Firefox starts; sessionstore.bak for pre-33 versions of Firefox
- upgrade.js-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update; sessionstore.bak-datetime for pre-33 versions of Firefox
If you come up with something promising, you may be able to have Firefox use it for your next session. Do any of the dates/times look promising?
Thank you for your help. Unfortunately when I had searched for help, one of the answers was to reboot which I did. As a result, the previous.js is from a questionable time and recovery.js file is from this morning. I don't know when the problem happened. The upgrade.js-20141126041045 file is from Dec. 10. How do I check to see whether the files will help?
You can run the code posted here to inspect the content of a file with session data;
You can open the Browser Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). Paste the JavaScript code in the command line and press the Enter key to run the code.
- Toggle the devtools.chrome.enabled pref on the about:config page to true to enable the command line
- https://developer.mozilla.org/Tools/Browser_Console#Browser_Console_command_line
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.
Where do I find the code? i get this message when I click on a file?
Hi BrianMorris, I think the solutions in cor-el's post will run inside Firefox and then display a file picker to open the file. It may be simpler if you copy that file to as easy-to-access location such as your Documents folder. In the file picker, you may need to change the view to "All files (*.*)" since that extension is unusual.
Alternately, if you want to open the file and copy the contents, try renaming it with a .txt extension so it launches in Notepad or your preferred text editor.