This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Hierdie gesprek is in die argief. Vra asseblief 'n nuwe vraag as jy hulp nodig het.

Can't restore previous session (greyed out); lost all tabs and groups

ArrogantMouse
ArrogantMouse
more options

I've had a similar problem with FireFox version 30 as found in the following question: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/997956?esab=a&as=aaq

I lost all my tabs including those in two groups (maybe 100 tabs) that I'd been keeping for a couple of years and in some cases much longer. Very occasionally I'll get the "oops this is embarrassing" message from FF and when I click on the Restore Previous Session button they reappear.

What happened this time is that when booting my computer (Windows 7), Adobe Flash wanted to download an update, and instead of waiting for the boot to finish as I normally would, I clicked on the Adobe Flash Download Update button. It then opened FF and hung, so I eventually used Task Manager to end FF. After the computer finished booting, when I opened FF it had no open tabs or groups, and the Restore Previous Session option (and each of the other options in that grouping in the History menu) was greyed.

When investigating, I find I do have the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files from yesterday (each about 4.5 mb), but I don't know how to access them because the Restore Previous Session option is greyed.

I've had a similar problem with FireFox version 30 as found in the following question: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/997956?esab=a&as=aaq I lost all my tabs including those in two groups (maybe 100 tabs) that I'd been keeping for a couple of years and in some cases much longer. Very occasionally I'll get the "oops this is embarrassing" message from FF and when I click on the Restore Previous Session button they reappear. What happened this time is that when booting my computer (Windows 7), Adobe Flash wanted to download an update, and instead of waiting for the boot to finish as I normally would, I clicked on the Adobe Flash Download Update button. It then opened FF and hung, so I eventually used Task Manager to end FF. After the computer finished booting, when I opened FF it had no open tabs or groups, and the Restore Previous Session option (and each of the other options in that grouping in the History menu) was greyed. When investigating, I find I do have the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files from yesterday (each about 4.5 mb), but I don't know how to access them because the Restore Previous Session option is greyed.

All Replies (2)

ArrogantMouse
ArrogantMouse Vraag-eienaar
more options

Problem solved. I found that even though Task Manager closed the FireFox application, it left the FireFox process running. When I used TM to close the FF process, then opened FF, it gave the "Oops this is embarrassing" message so I clicked on Restore and voila, I had my tabs back.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Awesome. And maybe back up your sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files somewhere outside of your Firefox settings folder in case you need them for a future recovery. (That would involve copying them back to your active profile folder while Firefox is closed so it finds them when it starts back up again.)