[v57+] Places Maintenance is built into Firefox.

Type about:support<enter> in the address bar.

You will find Places Database near the bottom. Press the Verify Integrity button.

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

Thank you for your reply. There is no folder called; Old Firefox.

I have discovered that as soon as FF starts it rewrites the places.sqlite file. I have a recent backup of the profile folder, so I put it back. The places.sqlite file is from 2016 (when I bought this laptop) and is 10Mb. As soon as FF starts the places.sqlite file is rewritten. It gets the current date and is just 5 Mb.

So I cannot access the original places.sqlite file from FF because it gets rewitten as soon as I start FF. I also tried making a new profile and copy everything from the backup in that folder, but exactly the same thing happens: the places.sqlite file gets rewritten.

At some time in the past Firefox has changed the default minimum for places.sqlite from 10 MB to 5 MB and Firefox might perform an automatic VACUUM that causes file to shrink, so this shouldn't necessarily mean that a new file gets created.

You can also check for issues with favicons.sqlite and remove this file.

Press the Verify Integrity button results in:

> Task: checkIntegrity + The database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 5120KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 5120KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 5120KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 5120KiB + pragma_user_version is 43 + pragma_page_size is 32768 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 104858 unique pages + Table moz_places has 24 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 27 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 0 records + Table moz_hosts has 6 records + Table moz_bookmarks has 16 records + Table moz_keywords has 0 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 0 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 4 records + Table moz_annos has 1 records + Table moz_items_annos has 4 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 14 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 0 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex > Task: _refreshUI

The bookmarks still do not show

removing favicons.sqlite still does not show the bookmarks

could it be an issue with having a previous version of FF before the crash and a newer version after the crash?

You can re-install the old Firefox and see if the problem is still there.

Install Older Version Of Firefox {web link} Be sure to read everything here.

If you still want to downgrade, look under; I still want to downgrade. Click the Directory of other versions and languages link. Look for the directory of the version that you want. But, remember that old versions may have security issues.

You should also check out Firefox; Extended Support Release {web link} ESR Notes System Requirements

Your places data has only 24 records, so that would be very few bookmarks.

Did you try restoring a backup? See: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

There could be a permissions issue with the HDD, since likely the data was created by a different user (different SSID even if the user name is the same). You might check on Windows sites on how to take ownership/control of all files on the HDD for your current user to rule out that potential problem.

The above all did not work. And I indeed have more than 24 bookmarks in my old profile folder. I cannot restore since I did not make a backup (no appropriate html or json file). I did not think that was necessary since I backup my complete FF profile regularly on an external device.

Is there a way to access the places.sqlite file without using firefox so I can just see the bookmark URLs?

BTW: there was no problem at all with installing Thunderbird and directing it to my profile on the hdd. Thunderbird works fine, I have all my old account settings ans mails.

ylpo said

I cannot restore since I did not make a backup (no appropriate html or json file).

Firefox does not find any of its earlier automatic bookmark backups and list those on the Restore menu?

Is there a way to access the places.sqlite file without using firefox so I can just see the bookmark URLs?

Probably, using either a program designed for that purpose or a SQLite database viewer. Here's an example of an online viewer:

http://inloop.github.io/sqlite-viewer/

However, a database viewer shows individual tables, so you may need assistance writing a query that shows all the relevant data in one view.

• Table moz_places has 24 records
• Table moz_bookmarks has 16 records

Are there any backups in the bookmarkbackups folder?

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

Restore just gives the option to choose a file and the bookmarkbackups folder is empty.

Oh... the bookmark backup files must be in your old profile. Do you still have easy access to that?

that is where I looked, in the old profile ...