Serious Unexpected Changes Occurred Overnight

[kenmorgan]

Linux (CentOS 6)
Firefox Quantum 68.9.Oesr (32-bit)

Last night I turned off the computer with Firefox still on; several tabs were on. Doing this is faster than "System -- Shut Down," and I have done it before with no problems. This morning I turned on the computer, and a page opened and asked if I wanted to bring up Firefox as it had been before the shutdown. This also has come up before. So I responded yes. There have been other times I've done this, and Firefox had come back up just as it had been the previous night. This morning Firefox came up very different.

(1) NONE of the tabs that had been open last night came back up, including my homepage.
(2) Only one tab opened, and it was not my homepage. It was some short Mozilla Firefox page.
(3) The entire line under the top blue line was missing--the line like Thunderbird's "File, Edit, View...
(4) I managed to find "Bookmarks," but at least two thirds of them are missing.

What in the world made all this happen???

To restore things the way they were, I tried looking at "Preferences" and several other things. I was able to restore my homepage, but nothing more. How can I get Firefox back to the way it was--ESPECIALLY the missing line under the top blue line and the missing bookmarks?

Thanks so much.

Ken

[mightyglydd]

Last night I turned off the computer with Firefox still on

Er, why would you do that?

[DanRaisch]

Last night I turned off the computer with Firefox still on

Very bad idea. When you do that have to hope that Firefox has committed to the hard drive any information (open tabs, etc.) that had been updated since the last disk write. If not, what was stored only in memory will be lost. Always safest to click on File->Exit and give Firefox a few seconds to save everything to disk before powering off the PC. Yes, I know you've gotten away with it in the past but you've just discovered why it's not the right way to do things.

To try to get back to where you were, see if menu path History->Recently closed tabs->Restore all tabs will bring back what you had open.

[kenmorgan]

Hi Dan! Thanks for your response.

I know what the tabs had on, so that's not a problem. But how do I do (3) and (4), both critical?

For (4), there were many hundreds, and almost all had been there for years.

[DanRaisch]

3) Try pressing Alt+V (to get to the View menu) then Toolbars->Menu bar to cause Firefox to display that line..

4) You may not get those bookmarks back unless you have a backup of the files. When Firefox is shutdown prematurely (before it can write what's in memory to disk) it can result in file corruption.
Try menu path Bookmarks->Show all bookmarks (or press Ctrl+Shift+B) and then menu path Import and Backup and select the date for yesterday if it is present. That should load one of the backup files that Firefox makes automatically. If that won't load or doesno't have all the bookmarks, try a day earlier and repeat until you see a worthwhile set of bookmarks load.

[kenmorgan]

Thanks again! Unfortunately, I have to go into town. I'll get back later today. Hope I still catch you!

[jscher2000]

Check about:profiles to see whether you are not running in your main profile.

[kenmorgan]

Success!!!

Dan:

3) I followed your instruction on 3, and the line "File, Edit, View, ..." came right back up.

4) Before following your instructions on 4, I clicked "Bookmarks" (which is now there--in the line brought back by step 3), and low and behold ALL the bookmarks are there again (well over 1000 Web pages bookmarked over many years!)!

I think that puts Firefox back the way it should be.

Jscher:

Nice to "see" you again!

I looked at "about:profiles" before doing 3 and 4 above. The "Profile" WAS "default."

Thank again.

Ken

[DanRaisch]

You're welcome.