You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder, which handles all your Firefox bookmarks, files you have downloaded, and websites you have previously visited.

Either enter about:support in your address bar, or go to:

• Help (or > ) > Troubleshooting Information

Beside Profile Folder, click the "Show Folder" button to access the location of the file. Make sure it isn't read only. You can also install the Places Maintenance extension to run maintenance on the file. Please read the following articles first as they provide helpful hints and instructions that may be relevant to you:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

Check and see if you are in Private Browsing mode. If you are, nothing is recorded.

Type about:preferences <Enter> in the address bar.

Select Privacy.

The button next to History, select Use Custom Settings.

At the bottom of the page, turn on Clear History When Firefox Closes. At the far right, press the Settings button. Turn on ONLY Cache and Form And Search History leaving the others off.

Problems with bookmarks and history not working properly can be caused by a corrupted places.sqlite database file.

Type about:support in the address bar and press enter.

Under the page logo on the left side you will see Application Basics. Under this find Profile Folder. To it’s right press the button Show Folder. This will open your file browser to the current Firefox profile. Now Close Firefox.

Locate the file. Then rename or delete it. Restart Firefox.

Hi CoryMH

How can I tell if the Profiles folder is read only? I've installed Places Maintenance, which seem to be saying all is well. This morning, I had no History showing at all. I renamed the places.sqlite database file and restarted Firefox, made no difference, History still missing entries. I don't mind reoving Firefox completely and starting afresh. Would that make sense? I'm finding all this hard work, so if that will make it easier...

Hi Fred McD I'm confused even more now!

"At the bottom of the page, turn on Clear History When Firefox Closes. At the far right, press the Settings button. Turn on ONLY Cache and Form And Search History leaving the others off ."

I want to keep History, the above seems to be telling me to set it to clear it! Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick again. Please see my response to Cory MH re places.sqlite file.

You can leave all "Clear history when Firefox closes" settings as you currently have and make sure that History doesn't have a tick. That should be sufficient.

Either enter about:support in your address bar, or go to:

• Help (or > ) > Troubleshooting Information

Beside Profile Folder, click the "Show Folder" button to access the location of the file. Right click on the places.sqlite file and select Properties. Under the General tab, in the attributes section should have a check box saying "Read-only", uncheck it if it is checked.

In the privacy tab of your options page:

• Tools (or ) > Options > Privacy

What settings do you currently have for the Firefox history? Make sure that you are either on "Remember history", or "Use custom settings for history" as "Never remember history" will do just that.

Also, if you are on custom settings for history, make sure that you have "Always use private browsing mode" unchecked as FredMcD posted earlier, and have browsing history and downloads remembered. You do not need to have the check box "Clear history when Firefox closes" checked, but if you do click the "Settings" button to make sure that you aren't clearing your history and downloads.

Your cache holds temporary internet files such as background images or profile images that are shown on web pages. Firefox stores these files so that if you revisit these sites, they will load faster since these files are already on your computer and don't need to be retrieved from the site again. Your cache is safe to clear if you want, and will not affect your browsing history or download list.

OK. I 've been waiting to get a second day of history, which I now have. In my history sidebar, I only have Today, but if I open that I see the sites I visited today and yesterday! That is under View by Date. View by Date And Site shows Sites visited yesterday and today. So where has yesterday gone? (!)

I've re-created the places.sqlite file twice, My settings in Security are: Always use Private browsing-Unchecked Remember my browsing and download history-checked Remember search and form history-Unchecked CCear History when Firefox closes-Unchecked Places.sqlite is read only, was, and still is, Unchecked.

As regards the 'Blue down arrow' for downloads, should it keep downloaded items until I clear them manually? I seem to remember that is what used to happen, but now, if I download a file and install it, that file will diappear but will show in C:\Users\Mike\Downloads.

What dates do you see in the History Manager (Library) if you use a search for a colon (:)?

Downloads only show temporarily in the drop-down list of the Downloads arrow on the Navigation Toolbar. You should see them all in the Downloads folder in the Library and on the about:downloads page.

Sorry cor-el, I don't know what that means!

I'm OK now with downloads, thanks.

Would it make any sense if I completely removed Forefox and started over again? Whatever is causing this History stuff is driving me up the wall, and I would dearly like not to have to spend more time on it!!

Will unistalling remove everything, including profiles and whatever is causing all this? Thanks.

You can try to create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Hi cor-el

An update: After I had 2 days History, when I checked, Yesterday still was not showing yet yesterday's history showed in View by site. View by date showed both days history but no Yesterday. Later on, if I went through the different View options for History, some sites just disappeared! I bit the bullet and removed Firefox, made sure the FF folders were removed also that profile and places.sqlite were gone, did a registry clean, re-installed Firefox, and got the same faults as before. I then did a Firefox Reset and that made no difference either. I went to a whole load of sites over 2 days but most of then just went. I used default settings, I made sure that History was not set to clear when I closed the browser. I haven't tried re-creating the profile as I i,agine the above should have done that.

I don't know if it is relevent but last week I installed Nightly , it went into it's own folder. I played with it for a few days but it was too buggy so I removed it. Could there be any remnants causing my current problems?

I checked my settings (Win 8.1) against my wife's netbook (Win 8.0) and mine are set to the same as hers.

Open the main History Manager <Control><Shift> H. What shows here?

Hi bertie11, does history disappear randomly or can you associate it with other events, such as shutting down and restarting Windows, or going a certain number of days? CCleaner and other utilities that have browser privacy features may remove history either on a schedule or at Windows startup.

FredMcD, Shift Control H gives me History for yesterday, now that I have two days to work with. This is probably the first time I've seen Yesterday since I got this laptop about 2 weeks ago.

But the odd thing is, Today isn't showing, nor are sites I visited today. That is with View>By Date and Site. How odd.

jscher2000, I had been losing History seemingly randomly, and I think after shutting down as well. Mozilla sites seemed to be retained though!

I use Advanced System Care but I have turned off any settings that involve cleaning history so I'm pretty sure it's not that. ASC is the only cleaning utility I use.

JUst went to 2-3 more sites, they don't show in any of the Views, nor does Today show at all.

So at least I can now see Yesterday's stuff, but I no longer get Today's stuff!

Let's try this If it works, something inside Firefox is the issue. If it does not, then it's something on your computer.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}

Jump around safe web sites for 10 - 20 minutes. Close Firefox. After a few minutes, restart FF in safe mode and jump around some more. After, open the full history window <sft><ctl> H while still in safe mode. How does it look?

After, start FF normally. Open main history. Is there any change?

At no time today, including time spent following your instructions above, has any site I visited since 06.30 this morning shown up in any of the different Views on the History sidebar nor on the full history window. All I get is all the sites from yesterday showing.

Which is a pain (no pun intended!). If it is my machine, I suppose the first place to check is recent Windows updates? Trouble is, I've had this new laptop just over a week now and I can't remember when I first noticed this History problem.

It sounds so much like private browsing. Are you sure you aren't using a private browsing window? There are two ways to use private browsing:

• On demand: you can use any of these methods to open a private browsing window and a small mask icon should appear near the minimize/maximize/close buttons:
  • Ctrl+Shift+p
  • "3-bar" menu button (or File menu) > New Private Window
  • right-click a link or bookmark > Open in New Private Window

• Automatic: you checked for this earlier in the Options dialog on the Privacy panel (it will say "Firefox will: Never remember history"). With automatic private browsing, there is no mask icon.

Type about:config<Enter> in the address bar. If a warning screen comes up, press the Be Careful button. This is where Firefox finds information it needs to run. At the top of the screen is a search bar. Type in the names below, and change to the value shown

browser.privatebrowsing.autostart = False

privacy.clearOnShutdown.history = False

As to my prior post about running Firefox in safe mode, now we are going to do this the other way around.

Start your Computer in safe mode. Then start Firefox..

Starting The Computer In Safe Mode; Free Online Encyclopedia

Poke around save web sites. Close Firefox, then do it again. After a while of surfing (10 - 20 min), open the Main History Manager. <Control><Shift> H. How does the list look?

Now restart the computer normally. Then open to the FF History. Tell us what is going on.

Situation at Tuesday evening: I finally managed to get Yesterday and Today showing visited sites. I don't believe I actually changed anything but at 79 years old, who knows?! I do remember setting Privacy<History to Use custom settings for History (with Clear History when FF closes, NOT ticked) but I now notice every time I do this, when I check again it shows as Firefox will Remember History. I know it amounts to the same thing but should it do that? </p>

This morning (Wednesday), I still have Yesterday and Today but I do not have Monday now!

jscher, I'm pretty certain I do not have private browsing set, I would never need to use it anyway as no-one else uses this laptop.

FredMcD, the results of the two about:config queries: browser.privatebrowsingautostart=false Privacy.clear onstutdownhistory=true

I'm going to fire this off now and do the Windows Safe Mode checks and report back.