losing history, form autocomplete, urlbar history. HELP!

[gramji]

Hello all,
I had this problem with Ff 1.0.7 and now with 1.5 too. randomly my history, urlbar history and autocomplete form entries get lost when i start my Ff. I did an install on top of a previous install, then tried it. same thing with a new install, new profile, no extensions, no themes. just suddenly one instance everything except bookmarks gone. It is happening to me only one computer where I store my history (my laptop). I have not tried any other PCs as they are public PCs. I do put up with it but I am trying to circumvent this problem once and for all. Other than this bug I seem to be doing fine with Ff and have been using it since 0.6 (Phoenix i think). I did a search of this forum but got no relevant hits. PLEASE HELP. thanks in advance.

ganesh

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy ganesh,

if the only things disappearing are your history and form data, then the prob is almost certainly NOT firefox. USUALLY that kind of thing is related to a cleanup done by overly aggressive settings in various privacy/paranoia configuration utilities.

since that is entirely controlled by your system setup, i can't give you any other hints but to look carefully at everything that might be wiping out the files containing the nfo that keeps vanishing.

the files are these ...
http://tinyurl.com/adfb4
- formhistory.dat = Saved form data
- history.dat = Browsing history

one workaround while you are hunting for teh actual cause of the file disappearances is to use this ...
- Bookmark Backup 0.3.3, Makes backups of your bookmarks everyday
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.ph ... ark+backup

note that BB can back up all the files you tell it to! [*grin*] i have it ignore my history fie, but you CAN tell it to back up virtually any file in your profile.

hope that helps,
lee

[gramji]

hey lee,
thanks for your response. i must say the only programs that i have running for security is symantec antivirus and XP firewall (being on windows XP) i have to run at least these programs. other than these it is the system default programs. my Ff settings are set to store at least 10-15 days of history, with 200MB cache, cookies till they expire, downloads manually and the clear private data is set to delete nothing and definitely nothing without asking. but i will look at the extension you suggested and hope it works. any method u suggest that I can use to debug the problem, program by program, or setting by setting.
thanks
ganesh

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy ganesh,

fooey! was hoping you had some agressive cleanup utiltiy that was the source of the problem. [*sigh ...*]

you might wanna tell NAV to ignore those specific files. if you are REALLY determined you can get one of the file monitors and track what touches those files. something like this ...
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

then just filter the info for your files. there is also windows auditing, i run w2k and in the properties/secr=urity/advanced you can turn on auditing and see SOME of what hits the file. i don't recommend it cuz [a] it's not complete by any means, [b] it slows the system down noticably most of the time.

take care,
lee

[gramji]

thanks lee for your support. i will play with that program and post another forum help if needed hopefully after a few days of monitoring. thanks again.
ganesh

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy ganesh,

you are welcome! glad to help when i can ... even if it's just with workarounds. [*grin*]

when [note the optimistic avoidance of "if"] you figure it out, please post back here? i am quite curious about it. if you keep one of your "Topic Reply Notification - " emails from this thread it will be easy to find it again.

good luck!

take care,
lee

__________
edit - ee-lay an't-cay ell-spay oo-tay ood-gay, an-cay e-hay?

[gramji]

Hey Lee,
I have tried Filemon.exe for almost a week now. the only program that was touching the firefox folder and profile folder that was not windows svchost was symantec antivirus. so to simplify things i uninstalled symantec and tried it for a while. did not help. i still lost history etc randomly. then i tried installing etrust antivirus instead of symantec and the problem still exists. there is a bugzilla bug filed at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=242207 that seems similar to my problem but i am not able to reproduce the bug as per comment 51 as suggested in the page. so till this bug is fixed i am afraid i am stuck with it. thanks for all your help.
ganesh

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy gramji,

looks like ya found the right bug to me. thanks for the link!

also looks like the fix won't happen until ff200. [*sigh ...*] since the shift-del thing is NOT making it happen on your system, perhaps you could backup your history file. again, bookmark backup has an option to include the history file in it's last-7-days backup set.

- bookmark backup
http://tinyurl.com/65wx7

then if if decides to wander away, you can put a copy from the backup set in it's place.

the comment 51 thing does NOT trigger it for me either. then again, i have never had it happen to me. yet ... [*grin*]

take care,
lee

- ps
does "comment 51" bring "area 51" to mind for anyone other than me?
lee-

[gramji]

thanks again. i am using the backup extension on an alternate profile. so that is working. i was just trying to avoid using anything to circumvent this problem. but i guess i will wait for 2.0. thanks for all your help.
ganesh
(as far as area 51 - considering we are the only two people on this thread - it did not occur to anyone else at least on this thread [*grin*])

[Lee_Dailey]

[*grin*] good luck!

[jimbobaggins]

I have had the disappearing history, bookmarks etc problem a number of times since I started using Firefox and searched the forums here for an answer.

What I found was that the problem with the book marks had to do with a sporadic (at its own leisure) change of users I have a default profile and a profile in my own name, for some unkbow undetermined reason firefox was deciding to change which profile it started with. I added the -profilemanager option to the shortcut and this works as long as you remeber to click the link. I f you start using the link that the system likes to install in the most used programs section then eventually the switch will start happening again.

So far as disappearing history is concerned I have traced the cause to a pop-up window that occassionally invades my desktop (flash banner ) talking about how ny computer might be under threat. At first I just closed this window by using the X in the top right corner but his seems to cause the flash to then delete all history (its obviously using some vulnerability in firefox) I run spybot with tea timer and AVG both are kept updated and tea-timer is set to stop browser helper objects from executing.

I am sure it is this particular popup ad as it is the only one I ever get and it always precedes the disapparance of my history and happens when i first start firefox. This popup does not occur everytime i start firefox but when it does I am assured that it means i will have lost my history. There is so far as I am aware no way to close the popup without clicking the X as I dont want to follow the link and it seems that as soon as it is displayed it is already too late. I speak with some authority on this matter as I am extremely aware of what happens when, and what changes occur this is the only thing that I can point too and it always means i will lose my history.

It occurred so frequently that I stopped opening and closing the browser multiple times , now i just leave it open and minimised, oh and i start it with my network cable unplugged, but when i forget i am taking a 50-50 chance.

I used to use ghostsurf to avoid these kinds of problems as all such ads , attacks, virii etc are filtered by the proxy. but the program did not want to work over wireless ????

anyway if anyone notices such an occurrence just report it here hopefully the devs will eventually catch on and look into whats happening hear but my money is on a vulnerability being exploited through an ad placement engine that firefox allows low level access. Or a maintenance tracking cookie or some such. I am still using it despite these problems as things were much worse with IE although Opera seemed like a good bet but doesnt support javascript as well as firefox.

[gramji]

i unfortunately cannot say that i have the same experience. i never had any popups causing this. but then i dont know what is causing it. thanks for bumping this.

[gramji]

Hello thread. To whomsoever is reading this. The problem did go away. I do not know why but I do know what I did that changed this. I was having some issues with my Windows user and so created a new one. I did not move over my firefox profile to the new windows user except for the bookmarks and history. And POOF bug gone. I do not have bookmark backup extension installed and have not had a problem for more than 10 days. i have the regular extensions installed (menux, tab mix plus, noscript, ie view lite) and the minifoxflat theme. i dont know what the problem was that went away but go away it did. thanks everyone for your help.
ganesh

[Guest]

all this mess-up is because of some of bad-coded-but-usefull EXTENSION, like IE Tab, Tab Mix Plus, and more.

[kustodian]

I've been having this problem for about 2 months. My "history.dat" file just becomes empty at a random moment