Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

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AV8NLVR
Posts: 76
Joined: December 1st, 2006, 11:29 am
Location: Jackson, MS USA

Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by AV8NLVR »

Ever since I updated FF to a recent version I am having a problem with my history. It goes away when I close the browser. Not my bookmarks, just history. The only way I was able to restore it was to build a new profile and copy all files to it from a backed-up version of my profile from before this started happening. Then I got all my history back. It did not come back by restoring only the places.sqlite file, I had to do all files in the profile. But this morning, its gone again when I open the new profile! What is happening?
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therube
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Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by therube »

Not exactly history, but something to look through, Preferences not saved.

Suppose the first thing you'd want to do with a new Profile - before making changes or importing anything, is to verify that it does save history.

If it does, then import from old Profile - piece-meal, restarting (FF) & checking after each piece to see if history is maintained.
I'd start with places.sqlite, first. Possible that it is corrupted somewhere in there, causing it not to retain history?

And I'll assume you are not using Private Browsing, nor have disabled history, or clearing it externally (CCleaner or similar).
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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AV8NLVR
Posts: 76
Joined: December 1st, 2006, 11:29 am
Location: Jackson, MS USA

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by AV8NLVR »

I found that there was a file called places.sqlite and one called places.sqlite.corrupt. The corrupt one was a much bigger file size while the normal one was around 10mb and had no history in it. So I deleted the plain one and re-named the corrupt one without the "corrupt" and now the history is back. I don't see anything wrong or a reason why it would have been corrupted.
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by Brummelchen »

your profile is corrupted, however* - start a new one.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows or
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

recover data
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/re ... ld-profile

* dont use any 3rd-party cleaner on firefox data, like ccleaner or ** tuneup or any similar.
some wrong working antivirus can do same. or rights mismatch/mismanamgment in your users account folder
this wont happen from alone, i never had that.

concerning any bookmarks backup you should look into the <profile folder>\bookmarkbackups
and copy it (the whole folder) back into the new profile. firefox without any places.sqlite will restore from that file(s)
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dickvl
Posts: 54146
Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by dickvl »

You did remove all other places.sqlite files (e.g. places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal) when you restored the file?

See also:
https://developer.mozilla.org/Mozilla/T ... leshooting
AV8NLVR
Posts: 76
Joined: December 1st, 2006, 11:29 am
Location: Jackson, MS USA

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by AV8NLVR »

No, I do not believe I removed those other files. What I did was copy all files from the last known good version of my profile into a newly created (empty) profile. Should I delete those? That troubleshooting link describes how to "fix" a corrputed one but I just replaced mine with like I said one from several days prior.
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dickvl
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Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by dickvl »

When you replace a places.sqlite file then you should always remove the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal SQLite temp files and move away any other places.sqlite files (numbered or marked as corrupted) because a possible cause of Firefox marking the file as corrupted could be that these SQLite temp files didn't match the places.sqlite file.
AV8NLVR
Posts: 76
Joined: December 1st, 2006, 11:29 am
Location: Jackson, MS USA

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by AV8NLVR »

Right now I have besides the regular places.sqlite, one called places.sqliteOLD, places.sqlite-shm, and places.sqlite-wal. I don't know what the OLD file is. It is 71mb while the regular one is 51mb, and all my history seems to be accounted for as well as bookmarks. Should I go ahead and delete them? When I had the corrupted one, I did not have an OLD file so I don't know where it came from.
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dickvl
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Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: Browsing History Keeps Disappearing

Post by dickvl »

It is normally OK to leave the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal files.
Firefox leaves them to speed up the Firefox startup process, otherwise they need to be created at every start.
They only need to be removed when you would remove places.sqlite because of issues with the file.
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