Mozilla FireFox ate my Bookmarks!

GrayWolf · Mar 6, 2007

Yeah as weird as it sounds recently all of my personal settings and bookmarks (an extremely important source of links and info for me, invaluable) have all been either erased or are being hidden from me. It happened after I turned off the power switch on my computer. The powersupply switch...

Turned it back on booted up nothing wrong. I turn on FF and it asks me if I want ot disable tabmixplusrecovery cuz FF has its own. I was like wth? and clicked ok. Everything got reset like it was vanilla FF and I had all these installation windows for plugins I had already had for a long time. I check my bookmarks an nothing is there. I had over a hundred bookmarks and now they are all gone, save for a bookmarks xml file which for some reason was in mydocs. However that is from September and there were a lot of things added since then.

Anyone know how I can get my bookmarks back? There's no way they would have you put such important and convenient information in such a hazardous way.

jivetrky · Mar 6, 2007

You can try doing a system restore in windows. That will sometimes work with applications. No guarantees though.

otherwise, all I can say is that in the future, you should check out a firefox extension called "FoxMarks"

it's a really great extension that backs up your bookmarks to the foxmarks server. So if you ever loose your bookmarks or have to reinstall or something, you just reinstall foxmarks and use your username and password and they come right back.

Also you can goto my.foxmarks.com and access your bookmarks from anywhere! it's very cool

Definitely one of my favorite extensions!

GrayWolf · Mar 6, 2007

Thanks alot. After thorough checking and using win desktop search (and a sys restore) I've determined that the precious bookmarks have all been digested by now. Thankfully I have this old list from September which I can buil up on again. And yeah I am definitely gonna get that extension thanks.

zexmarquies01 · Mar 6, 2007

weird? uncommon? WTF?

this has been a continuing event for me!

god, firefox has deleted my bookmarks at least 10 times. I got so annoyed, that after about a month or so, i always backup my bookmarks to a location i have selected.

for me, this is a "normal" thing. its VERY annoying, so i just make backups of my bookmarks on a regular basis. To me, its a routine thing to do, like defragging, and virus scanning.

i know it SHOULDN'T be a normal thing...but meh. Hasn't happened yet with firefox 2. But i'v only been running FF 2 for a month now. so, i'll give it time, and see what happens.

and like you, it happens mostly when i shut down the PC suddenly, like just hitting the power switch, or i have a power-outage. or when the PC suddenly re-starts due to an un-stable overclock.

jivetrky · Mar 6, 2007

hmmm...I've never had this happen. But I'd definitely recommend foxmarks to help avoid it if it ever does happen again

Enablingwolf · Mar 6, 2007

Firefox since a few versions ago handles it's bookmarks in html format. You don't need to actually have an extension for saving them. It is built into the bookmark system.

Firefox 1.5 and earlier: "Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."
Firefox 2: "Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."

If you happen to get that strange bug of them being munched. Just do a search for html files in the Mozilla folder.

Myself I just pull the whole Mozilla folder out my Windows user profile and save it. That way I keep my whole profile saved passwords and everything intact. It is easier and keeps Firefox lean. I have had the same thing in Firefox since '04'. Otherwsie I would have to rebuild my passwords and bookmarks with an extension. This way, all I do is get Firefox the way Ilike it. If I have to reinstall. Get hte base app in and then overwrite the folder. Good as the way I left it last. Much faster then installing all the extensions again too. Like a bookmark backup extenasion.

C:\Documents and Settings\~User account\Application Data\Mozilla

If your bookmarks have been eaten. Moz has kindly added a knowledgebase to locate the lost items. It als opgive how to backup them without an extension.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks

All the options is one reason I like the browser. Lucky for me, I only lost my bookmarks once. It is rare now reading of the lost bookmarks now. It used to be pain for alot of users.

Martel · Mar 6, 2007

I've had it happen. Firefox has defaulted to a different user, try this extension to switch it back. There is another way built into firefox but I can't remember it right now.

*edit found it, use -profilemanager command line argument as per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

Neuromancer · Mar 6, 2007

GrayWolf said:
Thanks alot. After thorough checking and using win desktop search (and a sys restore) I've determined that the precious bookmarks have all been digested by now. Thankfully I have this old list from September which I can buil up on again. And yeah I am definitely gonna get that extension thanks.

About once a month I take my opera profile, rar it and email it to myself. (not hte whole profile just bookmarks, cookies and password information).

Im sure you could do something similar with firefox.

zexmarquies01 · Mar 6, 2007

Neur0mancer said:
About once a month I take my opera profile, rar it and email it to myself. (not hte whole profile just bookmarks, cookies and password information).

Im sure you could do something similar with firefox.

...or a USB Thumb drive would probably be faster.....

Neuromancer · Mar 6, 2007

zexmarquies01 said:
...or a USB Thumb drive would probably be faster.....

True.. When I had 6 hdds I also backed it up to a spare HDD weekly. Or anytime I was going to reinstall. The cookies/bookmarks/wand data is only 400KB archived maybe. So emailing it is no big deal. Even if it was 1MB, it would still be most likely be in a mirrored array on email server, whereas I do not do that on my home PC

Anything really important I send to email as well as backup here but im running only a stripe right now... so email is my best bet and its free

jivetrky · Mar 6, 2007

Enablingwolf said:
Firefox since a few versions ago handles it's bookmarks in html format. You don't need to actually have an extension for saving them. It is built into the bookmark system.

Firefox 1.5 and earlier: "Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."

Firefox 2: "Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."

If you happen to get that strange bug of them being munched. Just do a search for html files in the Mozilla folder.

Myself I just pull the whole Mozilla folder out my Windows user profile and save it. That way I keep my whole profile saved passwords and everything intact. It is easier and keeps Firefox lean. I have had the same thing in Firefox since '04'. Otherwsie I would have to rebuild my passwords and bookmarks with an extension. This way, all I do is get Firefox the way Ilike it. If I have to reinstall. Get hte base app in and then overwrite the folder. Good as the way I left it last. Much faster then installing all the extensions again too. Like a bookmark backup extenasion.

C:\Documents and Settings\~User account\Application Data\Mozilla

If your bookmarks have been eaten. Moz has kindly added a knowledgebase to locate the lost items. It als opgive how to backup them without an extension.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks

All the options is one reason I like the browser. Lucky for me, I only lost my bookmarks once. It is rare now reading of the lost bookmarks now. It used to be pain for alot of users.

Yeah, that is what I used to do before finding foxmarks. But foxmarks syncs your bookmarks at LEAST once a session. So you always have an up to date copy and you don't have to do anything, it does it in the background. Plus the added cool feature of being able to login to my.foxmarks.com and access your bookmarks from anywhere you may be.

Mozilla FireFox ate my Bookmarks!

GrayWolf

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