Losing bookmarks

[Guest]

Have you tried viewing any content?

[zorgon]

I will try.
Let you know soon.
Thank you.

[zorgon]

Viewing content?
It appears as if each file is blank.
Do you know why I have these files.

[Guest]

Only a guess --- it sounds like there's a problem with FireFox's upgrade process --- I "think" (heavy on the think) that it was an intention of the upgrade process to create individual files/shortcuts for each bookmark and then re-import them during the upgrade. I know of nothing else to help you along these lines. I suppose you would have to start over by re-importing your favorites from IE.... BUT.... whatever you do, install the extension Bookmark Backup. And remember, ANY opensource/free software, just like proprietary purchase stuff, is subject to anomalies that can and will destroy data.....

.....sorry I couldn't help.

[zorgon]

I looks like they still have some work to do to adapt the upgrade process.
Thanks for your help though.

[lambie55@aol.com]

I have lost my bookmarks several times and am exasperated and about to go back to explorer plz HELP

[obrugman]

Hello, I also experienced a sudden loss of bookmarks. One day they were all there, the next upon opening Firefox, 90% of my bookmark list was chunked off, so I lost many. Also, the homepage had been changed to the default Dutch FF-page, But the visited pages history was all intact.

I have followed the -p procedure as suggested above, but this didn't work. I didn't have two profiles, only the Default one. To conclude, Firefox may experience a sudden drop of bookmarks, and I haven't come across a repair procedure for it.

[Guest]

Fantastic thanks VectorThunder

[VectorThunder]

OK: That was the 'hanging' firefox.exe 'process' still running on your system. Do the following:

Close Firefox.
Open Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and look in the 'processes' list and if you find 'firefox.exe' then highlight it and click on 'end task'.

Now go:

Start > run, and type in: firefox.exe -p

That is firefox.exe<space><hyphen>p

That should launch Profile Manager and you should see TWO profiles listed. The original 'default' one has all your old settings. Delete the new one you created and launch with the old one.

If the above path doesn't launch Profile Manager, you may need to enter it as follows instead:

Start > run > firefox.exe -ProfileManager

If ever you get asked, out of the blue, to create a new Profile, don't. Just do the 'Task Manager' thing above and you can launch normally.

Good luck.

You're welcome

(Re-quoted above for anyone with the same problem)

[zorgon]

I can't find the extension Bookmark Backup.
Is it named something else, or posted on a different site than the mozilla addons?

[Guest]

I've tried everything in this thread, and nothing worked.

1. I did not create a new profile, but to make sure, I followed the steps in this thread, and there was only one profile showing up in the profile manager, and it is "default."

2. I tried to follow the following advice, but I have no idea what it means "Check your scandisk/chkdsk .chk files (FILE0000.chk, FILE0001.chk, etc usually put in FOUND.000 folder)." Can someone please elaborate on this? I will do it as soon as I understand its meaning. I ran the RUN command, and searched for those files, but the content is foreign to me. It just lists things.

3. To see if Firefox was creating a new bookmark folder or file, I did a search on bookmarks-1.html. Nothing showed up at all. I couldn't find this file, or anything like it, anywhere.

4. I looked for a file called bookmarks.html.moztmp: no luck. There's nothing called bookmarks.html.moztmp.

5. I tried restoring the registry from two days ago. Everything was fine just a day ago, but I restored a backup from two days ago, to prepare myself for everything. That did not help either.

6. I do not make backups of bookmarks because this never happened before. NEVER. I don't see why it should happen now. I have computer crashes all the time, but why should something happen to the bookmarks now? Everything else on my computer is just fine. That's the only thing that changed.

Can someone please tell me about anything else I may be able to do?

I am on Windows 98SE, and Firefox Preview.

[azmar]

For the earlier posters, or anyone who needs it: Bookmark Backup extension .

[sonnyrizo]

I am the Guest right above Azmar. I didn't realize I didn't sign in.

[Guest]

1. Open the run dialogue and type %AppData%. This will take you to the place where many Windows applications store their data for each user (its 'c:\documents and settings\(your user name)\Application Data' usually).
2. Open the 'Firefox' folder -> Open the 'Profiles' folder -> Open the 'default' folder -> Open whatever folder is here (it should have a weird combination of letters and numbers for its name). This is where the bookmarks file should be stored.
3. Look for files named 'bookmarks' with anything else around them. You can even open them in FF to see what's inside. I have two. A bookmarks.html and a bookmarks.bak. The one named bookmarks.html is the one FF loads every time you start it, so if you find one with the data you want, rename it to that.

You might want to dig around in the %AppData% folder if you can't find them there. Older FF versions stored their data in a folder called Phoenix, and then in the Mozilla folder for awhile, etc. etc. Just looking right now this computer had 2 folders full of profile information from long ago hidden away. The old bookmarks file may be somewhere like that.

The File0000.chk etc. would probably be stored on the root level. Open C:\ and look for 'em. When you run scandisk, if it finds bad files it will recover what it can from them and save it in those files. If its data from a text file you can open them up and cut and paste the text out so that you don't have to retype it. Entries that were in your old bookmarks file shoud look something like:

Code: Select all

<DT><A HREF="http://forums.mozillazine.org/" ADD_DATE="1105458270" LAST_MODIFIED="1105458380" ID="rdf:#$K5NSQ">Stuff</A>

Kinda confusing, but the web addresses would be the giveaway that it was a bookmark.

[sonnyrizo]

I tried going through bookmarks.bak and bookmarks.html. There's nothing in them except for some HTML.

I can't make out what's in the File0000.chk file because its all bunch of letters, with a number of URLs in it, but I don't see links that were in my bookmarks in there. If anything, File0000.chk looks like a Cookie folder, just listing websites I've been to.