Losing bookmarks

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
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michiganmike
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Post by michiganmike »

hellene wrote:First thing is to see what's in 'em. It's not guaranteed to be your bookmarks, but fingers crossed 0X

Open the folder and see what is in it. Your looking possibly for a file called something like mozbak.temp, but don't despair if you cant see that name.

Open the files with a text editor (Notepad or Wordpad) and see what is in them. The bookmark urls will appear as urls in plain text, so you should be able to see pretty well whether it's your bookmarks or something else.


Yes - Some of the FOUND000 ("recovered file fragments") files do indeed have the Bookmark list in them. What do I do with these found files?

Should I rename it something else such as bookmarks.html ? And if so... then what? Where do I move the file(s) to...? To my profile folder? I tried that with one profile but it didn't work- and there appears to be three profiles to chose from...

1) Documents & Settings >> Admin >> Application Data >> Mozilla >> Firefox >> Profiles >> kdlr3xa.default

2) Documents & Settings >> Admin >> Application Data >> Mozilla >> Profiles >> Default >> rpfki56ih.slt

3) Documents & Settings >> Admin >> Application Data >> Mozilla >> Profiles >> ckrnc28ck.slt


Which one, if not all of these, should I move the file with the bookmarks over to?


Or... do I do something entirely different?

Thanks.
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hellene
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Post by hellene »

I think stoneskull kindly posted the rest of the steps immediately after I posted.

You were probably posting to me at the same time, so back up slightly and they should be there.
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stoneskull
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Post by stoneskull »

yeah, copy it to your deskop and rename it to bookmarks.html

open firefox, go to Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks

Go File/Import

Import From File

Choose that bookmarks.html file on the desktop.

Good luck mate!
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stoneskull
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Post by stoneskull »

did it work?
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michiganmike
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Post by michiganmike »

stoneskull wrote:did it work?

Shux Yeah! Stoneskull is da man! Thanks for the PM as well, SSkull. That worked - seemingly just fine. Glad it's now factually documented and posted online for folks searching for the answer to find (and in case it happens to me again- ha ha).

NOW- my other problem is with Thunderbird. I lost ALL my email seemingly the same time that I lost all of my bookmarks. And I do see some of those FOUND000 files that appear to have all of my email folders listed- so I think I've still got all the mail... only now the hard part, which is trying to find out what to do with those files. Arrgh! This has had me working solely on computer repairs since noon today. Five hours! Arrgh!

See you on the Thunderbird Support forum....

MIke
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stoneskull
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Post by stoneskull »

cool mccool..

and if someone could let us know how win98/ME/NT/2K/XP differentiate in regards to where scandisk files are put, that would be sweet.

cheers.
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hellene
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Post by hellene »

Just got an XP machine at work, but haven't managed to crash it yet

2K uses scandisk and produces folders called FOUND.nnn in the root C:/

98 uses scandisk and produces files called either chk.nnn or nnn.chk or some such in the root C:/

95 used checkdisk and produced files called chk.nnn or chkdsk.nnn I can't remember where it put 'em its' too long ago now.....

Workgroups 3.11 used a dos utility called chkdsk or chkdisk and asked you where to dump the corpse

Can't remember back as far as Windows for Workgroups

Windows 2 did not have a disk checking utility. We used a Norton product.
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stoneskull
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Post by stoneskull »

there's firefox for windows 2 now?

seriously, thanks for that hellene.. you're a legend.
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hellene
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Post by hellene »

I'll take that as a compliment. I've just made myself feel extremely OLD :(
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StoneRyno
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Post by StoneRyno »

Ok after going through most of this thread I found the bookmarks.html.xxxx (I don't know what the xxxx part was. Anyways this contained most of the bookmarks but there were several things I bookmarked in the last month or so that were not in this. It appears that firefox routinely overwrites the bookmark.bak file. Is there a way of viewing previous versions of this file? I just need to find a way to get those last few missing added bookmarks.

I am also starting to use that backup solution to hopefully prevent future loss.
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Post by GUEST :) »

stoneskull: you may want to post your experience with this, including your solution, to this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249150

While I agree most would vote for an enhancement bug to add bookmarks backup as standard equipment, a better solution would be to get the bug fixed. Perhaps the info about what is actually happening to the files could point someone in the right direction to that end, as it is not reproduceable by a lot of people.

I for one have never experienced this bug, even though I have crashed my Firefox and even my OS (Windows XP SP2) at times, especially when testing things trying to help people here.

As a side note, I wonder if the file system in use on the hard drive (or partition) is relevant here? I have NTFS and as I said have never experienced this.
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stoneskull
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Post by stoneskull »

Mmm,

I use Win2K but I use FAT32.. it'd be interesting to hear if this has happened with NTFS.

I'll compact my experience/solution into an easy package and post it on that there.

Cheers :)
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hellene
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Post by hellene »

Win 2K, NTFS, Fox has survived regular abuse by three teenagers.....
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max1million
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Find Bookmarks

Post by max1million »

Windows explorer , tools, folder options, view tab, expand files and folder (by double clicking on it if not already), expand hidden files, put dot in show all files, apply, ok,(that shows hidden files and folders so you can search them). Windows start button, find, files or folders, named bookmarks*.htm* ,look in my computer, check in include subfolders, find now (searchs all folders for bookmarks).... Now you can open them in firefox to see what's there, and copy and paste the one you want to the desktop so you can find it to import using bookmarks manager.... Firefox , bookmarks, manage boomarks, file, import, from file, next,
look in desktop (or up folder to desktop), and choose the bookmarks, open.

If you cant find any good candidates they are likley gone, or you can import from inernet explorer or netscape instead of file , if they have the bookmarks still. You might also want to go back into folder options and and hide the hidden and system files again.
max1million
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Post by max1million »

ok
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