"All Bookmarks are gone" - Bring them back!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » June 29th, 2005, 11:45 pm

none of this profile BS works
importing doesnt work
i guess with mozilla you just have to assume that every 2 months you have to start over HUH

never thought i'd look forward to IE

ZRS · Post by **ZRS** » June 30th, 2005, 3:13 pm

i looked in to profile, the bookmark size is wrong, it's 1kbs or was it 15
i had way too much for it to be that small
i dled the first recovery program on the list, i dont understand how the stuff works cause it has no damn lables, just icons
also it takes two goddamn hours because i dont kno which sector the file's in

is there a more realiable program?

AnotherGuest. · Post by **AnotherGuest.** » June 30th, 2005, 3:59 pm

1. Search for bookmarks* . (INCLUDING HIDDEN AND SYSTEM FILES -- LOOK CLOSELY AT OPTIONS)
2. Check your scandisk/chkdsk logs. If you have none, run that program.
3. Run an undelete utility. Not a generic file recovery, but undelete. Sorry, can't recommend one.
4. Check your computer backup.

If files have been deleted or corrupted, as opposed to just misplaced in another profile, I believe this is all that can be reasonably done. Hope for the best. :-(

Guest1231 · Post by **Guest1231** » July 2nd, 2005, 4:40 am

switched cpus tonight.. had some problems with the over clocking and windows crashed several times.. i don't recall haveing a browser open but its possible.

Now.. all references to all bookmarks are gone, mozilla has deleted them in all locations under all users and the copies in the IE folders as well.

Im real ******* happy about that.. 6 months worth of bookmarks gone.

thanks mozilla for being as cool as M$ in making another crap happy browser.

Post by **manc39** » July 2nd, 2005, 4:46 am

Anonymous wrote:switched cpus tonight.. had some problems with the over clocking and windows crashed several times.. i don't recall haveing a browser open but its possible.

Now.. all references to all bookmarks are gone, mozilla has deleted them in all locations under all users and the copies in the IE folders as well.

Im real ******* happy about that.. 6 months worth of bookmarks gone.

thanks mozilla for being as cool as M$ in making another crap happy browser.

Have you tried the advise from this post immediately above yours?

Emily-TheStrange · Post by **Emily-TheStrange** » July 2nd, 2005, 9:16 am

I'm so glad that worked and I managed to find my bookmarks.
Thanks.

guest1231 · Post by **guest1231** » July 2nd, 2005, 2:28 pm

manc39 wrote:Have you tried the advise from this post immediately above yours?

Believe me I tried everything.. the information in this post is sort of useless and only applies to a lost profile.
my profile wasn't lost the actual folders on the disk were removed.

The advice in this thread is not adressing the real problem;
it is pointed towards a generalized problem of people loosing profile settings or information.. I read every page and it looks as if the majority or people who had their folders removed didn't bother re-posting as the information found here is not usefull for an actuall recovery, as it is simply a kind of no-brainer solution to re-activate a misplaced or inactive profile.

I'm very unhapy with mozilla about this, and I am debating the current long term use of this program. I would have rather been infected with spyware, viruses, and trojans than to have my data randomly removed from my machine with no cause.

AnotherGuest. · Post by **AnotherGuest.** » July 3rd, 2005, 8:29 am

guest1231 wrote:... the information in this post ... only applies to a lost profile.

Not true. While a new profile is the most common cause of misplaced (not lost) bookmarks, most of the advice is directed toward recovery of deleted or corrupted bookmarks files. Look here, and here. While no one can recover your bookmarks if the file is deleted and overwritten, there are quite a few examples of successful recovery.

There is a known bug, in which scandisk runs after a system crash and deletes the bookmarks files. Fx then creates a new bookmarks file and overwrites the backup with it. I'm pretty sure the bug is fixed for version 1.1, since it was given high priority.

If you get as far as overwriting the backup file, the scandisk logs are the key to recovery. You still have a good chance. If you don't get that far, you're in luck, and you should be able to make a full recovery.

Although you might think changing profiles would be a no-brainer, there are users who need that advice almost daily. That has greatly complicated the problem of discovering the actual problem. While it would be nice if you could just click on a link and receive just the advice that fits your exact situation, no one knows how to do that. So you have to be content with advice that fits any situation. Try again and let us know how you fare.

Now that you have an understanding of the problem, please consider posting here, especially if you can provide any solid clues on exactly what happened.

hellene · Post by **hellene** » July 3rd, 2005, 5:14 pm

Guest1231 wrote:Now.. all references to all bookmarks are gone, mozilla has deleted them in all locations under all users and the copies in the IE folders as well.

Given that there is no way a Mozilla product can delete IE favourites, perhaps your problem is not related in any way to Firefox, but is in fact related to your activities in fiddling with your hardware...? Note, I am not saying "this is your fault", what I am saying is "maybe you have reached the wrong conclusion in your diagnostic"

Guest · Post by **Guest** » July 3rd, 2005, 10:53 pm

C'mon... lost bookmarks worth over 2 years... the bookmarks.htm (a smart way to store bookmarks - NOT!) and *.bak are both at 442 bytes (empty!). Tried restorting the PC but to no avail... what am I supposed to do, switch back to IE? :/ this is a nasty bug and I'm suprised why it hasn't been squashed yet...

hellene · Post by **hellene** » July 4th, 2005, 3:56 am

Emily-TheStrange wrote:I'm so glad that worked and I managed to find my bookmarks.
Thanks.

Glad it worked out for you

Guest1231 · Post by **Guest1231** » July 5th, 2005, 5:00 am

I understood the problem from the start, I may not have been very informative in my description as I was pissed about loosing all my bookmarks. I realize there is a bug either in the storing of bookmarks, or in the update. Either way its a huge dissapointment for me in regards to the software.

2nd.
Mozilla has the capabilites of importing exporting bookmarks.. it can do so from the IE bookmarks list as it is an identical copy of that wich is stored under the current users profile settings, amongst other places. If mozilla can access and copy this file, then it can also remove it... and it has.

3rd.
I realize that a lot of people need help with fidning their browswer profile.. but that should be a seperate thread.

anyway, interestingly enough mozilla has also lost its layout settings .. ie: tool bars and menu/bar placements.
I will mess with chkdsk left-overs if I get a chance, but I'm not holding my breath over this one.

If this mishap is in any way related to OC'ing CPU's then there is a bigger issue at hand. I was not even on the internet, I spent 4 hours stepping this cpu, with a handfull of crashes.. once i got my stable settings... I jump on mozilla to check some forums.. and VIOLA!! my custom tool bars, and bookmarks are gone. Original profile still active.. So far it seems that it managed to keep my logins/pw that I allow it to.

Im not trying to be mean about this.. im mad though... and there is no other way to diagnoise this problem other than pushing full blame on one aspect of the mozilla code. pretty black and white to me.

hellene · Post by **hellene** » July 5th, 2005, 8:17 am

Guest1231, it sounds to me as if your "handful of crashes" related to your overclocking activities have
(a) trashed your profile folder
(b) trashed your IE bookmarks.

Diagnosis seems quite simple to me - perhaps try checking a few other datasets (digital photo gallery? word document folder? the spreadsheet you track your bank account on?) see what else has been trashed.

eracc · Post by **eracc** » July 5th, 2005, 11:06 am

AnotherGuest. wrote:
Guest1231 wrote:...mozilla has deleted them in all locations under all users and the copies in the IE folders as well.
Can you be more explicit? Fx doesn't share bookmarks with IE. It is capable of importing them, and never touches them after that. What IE folders? There's only one. IE stores all favorites in a single directory. If you run IE, do you still have your IE favorites? Or are you talking about favorites that you imported from IE into the Fx Bookmarks Manager?

By the way, the next time you do anything as drastic as changing CPUs or overclocking your CPU, you absolutely MUST back up your whole computer first. You could fry practically anything that way.

I am amazed at the number of people that are posting in this thread that do not backup their data. Is every one of them daft? Personal responsibility for one's own data is paramount when using PC hardware (especially when running an OS from Micros~1). Get a clue, people.

AnotherGuest. · Post by **AnotherGuest.** » July 5th, 2005, 11:25 am

I actually deleted that message just before it was quoted, because the part about the single directory for IE favorites is somewhat irrelevant and not quite true.

But in this case, it should be pretty straightforward to recover the missing bookmarks. Just restore the computer to its original, functioning hardware configuration, and retrieve all files from the backup that was made just before the brain transplant.

Guest1231,
We're sorry you lost your hard-earned bookmarks, and apologize if it turns out that Fx was partly at fault. Nevertheless, I have to say that if the computer was not backed up, that was _____ _________. It could easily have been the whole hard drive that was lost.