User:AnotherGuest.

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 17:35, 21 December 2006 by AnotherGuest. (talk | contribs) (Original KB version of 18 Dec 2006)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigationJump to search

This article deals with lost or missing bookmarks, recovery methods and future prevention. If changes you make to your bookmarks are not being saved or if you can't add new bookmarks, see the article Bookmarks not saved.

Mozilla-based browsers like Firefox and Mozilla Suite store your bookmarks in the file "bookmarks.html" located in the profile folder. (see the linked articles for details). Windows 2000 and Windows XP users: Read this for help finding your stored bookmarks.

If you don't see your bookmarks when you open Firefox or Mozilla Suite, they are not necessarily lost. Firefox automatically makes up to five daily backups (although you must recover one of them before they are overwritten). There may also be a program error that prevents the display of your bookmarks, or you may have inadvertently logged in as another user.

Bookmarks missing after installing Firefox 2 on Windows

Bookmarks may appear to be missing after upgrading to Firefox 2. This problem is caused by the installer not properly closing Firefox before doing the upgrade (bug 357922). To restore the missing bookmarks and fix other problems that may be related to the upgrade, you should reinstall Firefox.

  1. If you don't have the installer already, download it.
  2. Uninstall Firefox (your other settings will be unaffected).
  3. Restart your machine (advanced users can instead kill firefox.exe processes using the Task Manager ).
  4. Run the installer.

Bookmarks appear in the Bookmarks Manager, but don't work

If bookmarks appear in the Bookmarks Manager, but not in the main menu and can't be edited, see this article for instructions.[1]

Bookmarks missing on system with multiple users

Firefox and Mozilla Suite store user data in a separate place for each user on your computer. Make sure you are logged on to your computer with your usual logon name.

Multiple profiles and profile in use

Firefox and Mozilla Suite allow different users to have different settings and bookmarks. You may have inadvertently switched to another profile. Start the Firefox or Mozilla Suite Profile Manager and if multiple profiles are listed, select the other profile. If you receive a message that the profile is "in use" or if you are unable to start the original profile, read this article.

Bookmarks lost after computer restart/crash

The bookmarks file may become corrupted if your computer crashes, especially on Windows systems.[2] To restore your bookmarks, see Restoring bookmarks from backup below. If bookmarks are always lost after restarting, it may be because Firefox or Mozilla Suite is not properly shutting down. This can be caused by a faulty or misconfigured plugin or extension, or even malware. To see if this is your problem, perform the following steps:

  1. With Firefox running, open the Task Manager and switch to the Processes tab. Find firefox.exe in the list.
  2. Exit Firefox and watch for firefox.exe to disappear. This may take a few seconds if many tabs were open, or Firefox was using a lot of memory.
    • If the process disappears from the list, you're just seeing bug 333907. To avoid it, exit Firefox before shutting down your PC
  3. Select firefox.exe in the Task Manager and click on End Process.
    • If the process disappears and doesn't come back you have an extension or plugin issue and should seek support for it (they can usually be fixed by making sure everything is up to date).
    • If the process disappears but comes back, you have a virus, or some other malware. Anti-virus software may not be able to detect it. If yours doesn't, seek support. See also Firefox.exe always open.

Restoring bookmarks from backup

If none of the above solved your bookmarks problem, you can restore your bookmarks from a backup. In Firefox 1.5 and above, five daily bookmark backup files are saved in the bookmarkbackups folder, located in the Firefox profile folder. You can restore one of these backup files (or any other bookmarks file of your choosing). If you wish to restore from an automatic backup, you should do so immediately because the backups are overwritten daily as older copies are replaced by newer versions (you can increase the number of saved backups by modifying the value of the browser.bookmarks.max_backups preference to the desired number).

To restore a backed up bookmarks file, use the import bookmarks feature described below. Advanced users can instead replace the bookmarks.html file in the profile folder, if desired, with a backup copy, for example with one of the Firefox "bookmarks-(date).html" backups renamed to "bookmarks.html".

    • Firefox: "Bookmarks -> Organize (or Manage) Bookmarks... -> File -> Import... -> from File"
    • Mozilla Suite: "Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> Tools -> Import..."
  2. When the file picker appears, navigate to the folder that contains the bookmarks file you wish to use and select that file. Windows 2000 and XP users can navigate to the bookmarks backup folder typing "%APPDATA%" in the file field and pressing Enter, going into Mozilla then Firefox, then Profiles, then xxxxxxxx.default (where xxxxxxx is any sequence of numbers and characters), then the bookmarkbackups folder [3].

The bookmarks contained in the backup should now be available.

Other methods of recovery

  • Check the Recycle Bin/Trash for a file called bookmarks.html
  • (Windows) Run the error-checking tool Chkdsk (Windows 2000, XP) or ScanDisk (Windows 95, 98, ME) to see if you can recover any file fragments that contain your lost bookmarks. Look for files with names like FILE0001.chk or FILE0002.chk on the root directory (the files may be inside folders named FOUND.000 or similar). Open each file in Wordpad or Notepad and, if it contains bookmark data, rename it with an .html extension (for example, rename FILE0001.chk to bookmarks1.html). Finally, import the file using the Mozilla Suite or Firefox Bookmarks Manager [4].
  • Use a file undelete utility to see if you can recover the file [5] [6]

Prevention

  • Do not power down your computer with Firefox/Mozilla Suite running.
  • Some "computer clean-up" programs like System Wiper may delete your bookmarks. Make sure you do profile backups before using such programs.
  • Back up your profile on a regular basis or at least back up your bookmarks. See Guide: Bookmark Back Up Extensions/Utilities and More. As mentioned earlier, Firefox 1.5 and later saves five dated bookmark backup files to the profile folder. You can also use the "Export" feature of the Bookmarks Manager to periodically save your bookmarks to the backup location of your choice:
    • Firefox 1.5 and earlier: "Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."
    • Firefox 2: "Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks... -> File -> Export..."
    • Mozilla Suite: "Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> Tools -> Export..."

Related bug reports

Retrieved from "http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=User:AnotherGuest.&oldid=29731"