You can try Recuva or utilities to mine restore points. By analogy: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1272618#answer-1265602

Also, Firefox 28 is no longer supported and I can't imagine why you still run that version after all these years.

Also, if you have a System Restore point available, you can try Shadow Explorer.

tresp said

It was right after I run Ccleaner on it's "easy clean" mode

We recommend Not using 3rd party programs on Firefox because the browser can clean itself.

Also, as you have seen, the wrong data might be contaminated/removed.

In such an old Firefox version the browsing history may have expired and removed automatically when you started Firefox. It would have been better if you had created a backup copy of important data on beforehand. In current Firefox releases you keep a maximum number of pages.

jscher2000 said

Also, Firefox 28 is no longer supported and I can't imagine why you still run that version after all these years.

I can't recall either :). I thought that with the move to webextension some of my favorite add ons would be gone for good. Maybe TreeStyleTab.

cor-el said

In such an old Firefox version the browsing history may have expired and removed automatically when you started Firefox.

Whaaat? what's the limit? Why no notice?

In current Firefox releases you keep a maximum number of pages.

Say again? Both the old and the new versions have limits? How can I tell when I come near them? You mean it would eat the oldest pages to keep a total number?

It would have been better if you had created a backup copy of important data on beforehand.

I do have older ones. Since this has not been my primary browser, I forgot to run FEBE for some time. About a year lost.

FredMcD said

We recommend Not using 3rd party programs on Firefox because the browser can clean itself. Also, as you have seen, the wrong data might be contaminated/removed.

Thanks. But having looked at modified-dates of places.sqlite, I don't think it was ccleaner now. It may be related to a driver (https://adb.clockworkmod.com/ ), which, ironically, I installed to save a list of the tabs opened in my mobile chrome browser, as a backup.jscher2000 said

jscher2000 said

You can try Recuva or utilities to mine restore points. By analogy: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1272618#answer-1265602

Thank you for the idea. I tried Shadow explorer. I don't seem to have a shadow version of places.slite that is old enough. I guess there is no much hope. But are there any other relevant files ?

Check the dates on the files in the bookmarkbackups folder in the shadow copy of the profile. These compressed files are applied to the live Firefox using the "Choose File..." option of the Restore command.

Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

There is no backup for the history apart from places.sqlite, so without an older copy of places.sqlite your history is lost (you wrote you still have the bookmarks).

tresp said

jscher2000 said

Also, Firefox 28 is no longer supported and I can't imagine why you still run that version after all these years.

I can't recall either :). I thought that with the move to webextension some of my favorite add ons would be gone for good. Maybe TreeStyleTab.

Firefox 29 Australis did "kill" many older extensions; then with Firefox 44 the older, unsigned extensions were "killed"; then with Firefox 57 Quantum & the new WebExtensions almost all the rest of the older extensions were "killed", too.

the-edmeister said

almost all the rest of the older extensions were "killed", too.

That is why I refused to upgrade past v54. So far, no real problems.