Goddammit! For some reason, Firefox has erased all of my bookmarks made since June 18th. What the HELL?!
:mad:
Anyone know what might be up?
It did that to me once a long time ago. I never did find out why.
You didn’t get them back, I take it?
Firefox is much less stable than I would like, but I still use it in preference to Internet Explorer.
What version of Firefox are you using, Guin? If it’s version 1.5, there are some automatic backups of “bookmarks.html” that you can use to restore at least most of the lost info.
If you’re using Windows XP, search for a folder on Drive C named “bookmarkbackups”. (It’ll be under your user profile name in “C:\Documents and Settings”, buried down deep below "\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default", where xxxxx is a bunch of seemingly-random characters that on my particular PC is “1v1eifyv” (yours will be different). In that “bookmarkbackups” folder, you’ll find various files named things like “bookmarks-2006-09-28.html” (that’s my own latest, because yesterday was the last time I closed down Firefox). Just pick the most recent – which is probably also the largest in size – and copy it to the folder immediately above it in the directory tree (the “xxxxx.default”) folder. With Firefox closed down, rename this copied html file (i.e. “bookmarks-2006-09-28.html” in my case) to “bookmarks.html”. Launch Firefox, and you should have your bookmarks back – at least yesterday’s version of them, which is better than nothing.
A similar process works for Win2K. If you’re on a Mac it’ll be different and I can’t walk you through the exact steps, but someone else can.
There are various extensions to Firefox that will back up bookmarks and other settings, which might help you in the future. One such is here. Firefox 1.5 always keeps up to 5 previous backups of the bookmarks, however, so if you aren’t at v1.5 go and get it!
Panic not – even if you weren’t using Firefox 1.5, there’ll probably be something that can be done.
Please let us know the OS and version of Firefox that you’re using… and Good Luck!
Maybe it’s trying to tell you something 
btw how is the job going?
Also: even if you aren’t using Firefox v1.5, there should be at least one backup called “bookmarks.bak” in the “C:\Documents and Settings\Guinastasia\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default” directory. If it’s later than the latest one in “…\bookmarkbackups” folder described in my previous post, then use this .bak file. Just rename the current “bookmarks.html” file to “bookmarks.crap” or similar, then rename “bookmarks.bak” to “bookmarks.html”. Be sure that Firefox is NOT running when you do this.
Oh, and I’ve just noticed that in v1.5 at least, if you open Firefox, go to “Bookmarks” then “Manage Bookmarks”, you’ll get the Bookmarks Manager window. Once there, click “File” then “Import”. Select the “From File” button, click “Next”, and you’ll get a directory tree dialog labeled “Import Bookmark File”. You can use this to select a backup html file to use (using either the “bookmarks.bak” file described in this post, or the “bookmarks-2006-09-28.html”-style name in my post just above this. You still have to nagivate your way to “C:\Documents and Settings\Guinastasia\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default”, which is a pain, but you might prefer doing this to copying and renaming files – just depends on whether or not you’re a fan of Windows Explorer.
Here is Mozillazine saying pretty much what I said in my previous two posts, but more clearly, and covering more situations than I did. Oh well… that’ll teach me to post what I know before researching what others have written. :smack:
Thanks-I’ll give it a whirl and see what I can do. If this works, you have earned my utmost gratitude!
Geeks. This friggin’ board is full of geeks.
Beware of geeks bearing tips.
I’ve had the same problem before. Usually it’s a corrupted profile. Create a new profile and import your bookmarks and you should be good.
In case you don’t know how to do that, you’d go to Run and type in “firefox.exe -profilemanager”. It took me a while to learn that.
I THINK I found an earlier back up from today-if not, I found one from yesterday.
sigh
Thank you all, thank you all so very very much!
smooches and hugs and chocolates
Okay, this is bizarre-I found the bookmark backups, all right, but in the Folder FIREFOX, rather than the straight PROFILES.
If I go to Firefox > Profiles > Default >(some long string of characters)> bookmarkbackups I found several back up files since the 26th.
The only problem-so I copied and renamed one of them-but when I open up bookmarks, I’m still getting the deleted version!!! WTF?
Try going back a couple more days. It’s likely a backup of the erased bookmarks.
Funny, I opened it, and it seemed to have all the bookmarks from the day before. But I’ll keep trying. sigh
What date did you lose the bookmarks?
What’s the version of Firefox?
What’s the OS (althought that shouldn’t matter)?
If you simply double-click on the “bookmarks-2006-09-28.html”, i.e. open it up in Firefox as a simple html file rather than as the “Bookmarks File”, do you see all of the relevant bookmarks in the web page? They make seem formatted strangely, but are they even there?
What size is the backed-up file? Mine run about 800kB, whereas a brand-new Firefox-generated “bookmarks.html” is ~2kB.
If you’re using the “Windows Explorer-Copy-Rename” method, MAKE SURE THAT FIREFOX IS NOT RUNNING WHILE YOU DO THIS, or else it’ll simply overwrite “bookmarks.html” with the nearly-blank version when you close Firefox.
If you use the “Manage Bookmarks - Import File” method, then of course Firefox is running during this process.
Okay-I got it to work-I did the copy-rename method, but stupid me put them in the wrong profile folder, and then I renamed it wrong. It’s working now.
I ALSO copied the last three back ups to another file, and shall do so every few days, to ensure that I always have a back up.
Thanks, peeps!
Oh, and I’m using version 1.5.0.7