Firefox behaving strangely?

[Norm@Home]

I've got a friend who asked me if I could help her with her FireFox problems: (she is using the latest version 54.0.1)

Firstly: While the Bookmarks toolbar does appear no bookmarks are showing on it. If I go to Bookmarks/Show All Book Marks the window opens but I don't see anything, nothing in the left or right pane. I tried to restore from a previous backup file and I keep getting the message "Unable to process the backup file". I searched online and found numerous posts about this kind of thing happening because the places.sqlite file is damaged, she really didn't care if she lost her history or not so I closed FireFox and deleted the places.sqlite file and restarted but still had the same problem. I tried the option to "Refresh Firefox" and after tried to restore the bookmarks but still the same "Unable to process the backup file" error. After the refresh there were no addon's or plugins except for the default theme and the two default plugins "Open h264 video codec provided by Cisco" and "Widevine content decryption module provided by Google". I tried starting FireFox with the -P option and creating a new profile and starting FireFox using the new profile and I tried to restore a copy of a recent bookmarks file I'd copied to the desktop but again I received the "Unable to process the backup file" error message.

Btw her computer has the Eset anti-virus and I've done an in depth scan and it didn't find any viruses, I also scanned with AdwCleaner and it found a couple Pups which it removed but still the same problems as before.

I've tried all the suggested fixes for this problem, does anyone have any idea how to get the bookmarks working again?

Second: When she opens a Pdf file using the built in Pdf reader she can't print it, she selects print and nothing happens. For a short term work around I just had her download the Pdf and open it with the Adobe reader and print from there which worked. But how do I fix this FireFox Pdf print problem?

Thanks!

[Grumpus]

Have you tried to start Firefox in safe mode?
Safe Mode

[Norm@Home]

Yes, that's one of the things I tried; I just forgot to list it. I used Help / Troubleshooting / Restart With Add-On's Disabled and in safe mode I have exactly the same problems?

Thanks!

[DanRaisch]

After the refresh there were no addon's or plugins except for the default theme and the two default plugins "Open h264 video codec provided by Cisco" and "Widevine content decryption module provided by Google".

What a "Refresh" does is create a new, empty profile and dump the old profile to the desk top. That's confusing to most folks so we never recommend it here. Creating a new profile (as you later did) is the better choice when possible corruption of the original profile is suspected.

Have you searched your friend's hard drive for automatically created bookmark backup files files named something like bookmarks-2017-08-09_NNN_RANDOMCHARACTERS.jsonlz4 ? They would be in the old profile (on the desktop?) under a directory called bookmarkbackups.

[Norm@Home]

After the refresh there were no addon's or plugins except for the default theme and the two default plugins "Open h264 video codec provided by Cisco" and "Widevine content decryption module provided by Google".

What a "Refresh" does is create a new, empty profile and dump the old profile to the desk top. That's confusing to most folks so we never recommend it here. Creating a new profile (as you later did) is the better choice when possible corruption of the original profile is suspected.

Have you searched your friend's hard drive for automatically created bookmark backup files files named something like bookmarks-2017-08-09_NNN_RANDOMCHARACTERS.jsonlz4 ? They would be in the old profile (on the desktop?) under a directory called bookmarkbackups.

Yes, I had searched for bookmark backups and copied a few to the desktop and no matter what I do I can't restore them as I keep getting the same error message as I posted when restoring a file and going to Choose File and selecting any of the ones I copied to the desktop.

[DanRaisch]

It's possible that the bookmarks files were corrupted prior to the situation that brought your friend to you with this issue. Thus both the primary and backup copies of the data may not be recoverable.

This will be no consolation to your friend but the way to ensure one can recover from something like this is to backup the whole profile -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

[therube]

As a test, create a new, clean Profile.
Make a copy of old Profile bookmarks.*.json.

Import that copy into the new Profile.

Do your bookmarks turn up?

If not...

What size is the .json file?
Take a look (view) the file. Does it seem to contain relevant data?
(The file itself is binary, so do NOT "save" it, but you still should seem some "textual" data [along with "gibberish"].)

[Norm@Home]

My friends left on vacation yesterday, she'll be back on Monday and I'll try some more of these things.

Thanks!

[Norm@Home]

Ok, so I'm back on the computer looking at the various things people asked me:

TheRube: "As a test, create a new, clean Profile. Make a copy of old Profile bookmarks.*.json. Import that copy into the new Profile. Do your bookmarks turn up?" First off as far as I can tell there are no bookmark backups that are .json, they appear to all be .jsonlz4 is that correct? I did create a new profile and attempted to restore several of these book marks files and I still get the same error as I did in the original profile "Unable to process the backup file".

"What size are the bookmarks files?", looking at them historically they go from the oldest ones at 1,841 bytes to the latest ones up to 3,038 bytes.

I opened one in notepad to see what possible data it contains the first few characters are "mozLz40 x" and then a lot of binary data but I also see some text that may be book mark titles.

Any idea's?

[Norm@Home]

Also one other thing, in the new profile I tried adding a bookmark and I can't seem to bookmark anything; I don't get the FireFox dialog asking me for the bookmark title and in which bookmark folder to add it to.

[DanRaisch]

How are you initiating the bookmarking process? That is, what menu path or hotkey combo?

[therube]

(.jsonlz4 is simply a compressed version of .json.
FWIW, with a .jsonlz4 file size of ~1-3 KB, I would think there would be almost nothing there except for whatever FF might include by default.)

[Brummelchen]

jsonlz4 is a protected file format

[Norm@Home]

How are you initiating the bookmarking process? That is, what menu path or hotkey combo?

I'm clicking on the Bookmarks menu and selecting "Bookmark This Page".

[Norm@Home]

(.jsonlz4 is simply a compressed version of .json.
FWIW, with a .jsonlz4 file size of ~1-3 KB, I would think there would be almost nothing there except for whatever FF might include by default.)

TheRube & Brummelchen: I've searched the entire hard drive for *book*.json files and there simply aren't any, these are the only files in the bookmarks backup folder that may possibly be bookmarks.

I figured when I saw the Lz40 in the first few characters that they may be compressed but standard unzip programs don't seem to work on this, how do you unzip it?