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Firefox accidentally 'restored to default settings' during force-close. Personal settings and history disappeared... (Linux Mint)

BarbeRouge
BarbeRouge
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Firefox accidentally 'restored to default settings' when closed forcefully (~ $ killall), after the application was going slow and blocking, presumably due to system memory saturation. When I re-launched it, it appeared as if "restored to default settings", indeed, as when the OS was newly installed. BTW I currently use Linux Mint, which is a development fork of Ubuntu, using Ubuntu repositories.

All my preferences, open tabs, bookmarks, cached browsing history, passwords, add-ons, etc. are GONE. The files where some of these were can no longer be found in ~/.mozilla/firefox. They've been rewritten during the event and no older versions appear to be kept. Somehow, during the forceful shutting down, Firefox was "restored to default setting".

Does anyone have a solution for this anomaly? (At least I can recover my bookmarks and passwords from backups, like I would do when migrating from one machine to its successor, but I'd like to retrieve my open tabs and browsing history, add-ons etc., as I had them!)

Thanks... :-)


~Rick B.

Firefox accidentally 'restored to default settings' when closed forcefully (~ $ killall), after the application was going slow and blocking, presumably due to system memory saturation. When I re-launched it, it appeared as if "restored to default settings", indeed, as when the OS was newly installed. BTW I currently use Linux Mint, which is a development fork of Ubuntu, using Ubuntu repositories. All my preferences, open tabs, bookmarks, cached browsing history, passwords, add-ons, etc. are GONE. The files where some of these were can no longer be found in ~/.mozilla/firefox. They've been rewritten during the event and no older versions appear to be kept. Somehow, during the forceful shutting down, Firefox was "restored to default setting". Does anyone have a solution for this anomaly? (At least I can recover my bookmarks and passwords from backups, like I would do when migrating from one machine to its successor, but I'd like to retrieve my open tabs and browsing history, add-ons etc., as I had them!) Thanks... :-) ~Rick B.

All Replies (2)

FredMcD
FredMcD
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Look on your desktop. Do you see a folder called; Old Firefox?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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This was written for Windows, but perhaps it will help:

If you haven't already, before doing any file moves/deletes/reinstalls, you may want to do a normal system shutdown and startup to release any file locks and complete any pending updates. One user reported it took three shutdown/restarts to sort out his issues.

If your data does not magically reappear, the most likely scenarios for complete data loss are:

(1) A Refresh started but the migration of data from your old profile to your new profile was incomplete, or
(2) Your old profile was locked, so Firefox ignored it and created a new one.

Here's how to investigate those two possibilities:

Did Firefox perform a Refresh?

Unless it was interrupted in progress, you should find a folder on your desktop named Old Firefox Data. Inside would be a semi-randomly-named folder with freshly updated files. Do you see anything like that?

If so, we'll suggest how to rescue key files or completely restore the earlier profile folder.

If not...

Does the Profile Manager list your immediately previous profile folder?

To check on that, inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

This page should list all the profiles Firefox is currently aware of. If you see a profile that is not currently set as default that looks promising, scroll down to it and click the Set as default profile button below that profile, then scroll back up and click the Restart normally button. (There are some other buttons, but I think those are still "under construction" so please ignore them.)

Firefox should exit and then start up using the other profile. Is that the right one?

If it's not there...

Did Firefox orphan your old profile folder?

Here's how to check whether there are additional profile folders in the standard location in addition to the one you're using. Start by opening your current 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/Return

In the first table on the page, click:

* Windows: the "Open Folder" button, to launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.
* Mac: the "Show in Finder" button, to launch a new window listing various files and folders in Finder.

In the Windows Explorer address bar, click the capitalized word Profiles to move up one level in the folder hierarchy. More than one folder here by any chance? Do the files in those folders look like they were last updated around the time of the update?

(Mac users: please do what you need to do in Finder to check up one level...)

If you've got any promising looking folders, we can discuss next steps to recover use of them.