Can't restore Firefox session after doing System Restore in Windows 10
I used System Restore in Windows because I lost my Search Engine in Firefox and it didn't exist in "Customize Toolbar" option. I researched how to get the Search Engine back but nothing worked. I thought System Restore would solve the problem. Now I can't restore my previous Firefox session. And I can't find a sessionstore.jsonlz4 file. I read you have to rename a file in sessionstore-backups folder to sessionstore.jsonlz4 but I don't know which file to rename. I also read you can restore a recent upgrade.jsonlz4 but that is dated 3/5/24. I loaded previous.jsonlz4 file using the Scrounger tool but that didn't restore the session I had. (The previous.jsonlz4 file is dated 3/22/24 about 45 minutes ago.) I want to restore the session I was using earlier in the day. And "Restore Session" option has disappeared from the Firefox History dropdown menu. I tried the "Restore Firefox" option but that didn't help anything and it made my dropdown menus disappear. I have no idea how to get the session back that I was using earlier in the day.
All Replies (3)
That is the risk of using an earlier Windows restore point, it isn't guaranteed that you keep your data. If you can undo this ystem restore, the I would suggest to try this.
Be careful with using System Restore as this can cause your Firefox installation to get corrupted and may lead to data loss if files are replaced by older copies. Use this only as a last resort and backup important data.
What search engine is this about as Mozilla sometimes makes changes and pushes them remotely to all users?
System restore rolled back your Firefox profile folder to an earlier date. All history between then and now, including open tabs, unfortunately would be missing from the older data.
Is there any chance Windows created a new and current shadow copy of your Firefox profile from the moment before you restored the old one? I don't know the safest way to check on that, but there are a couple programs we often suggest to check whether you can extract Firefox data files from a restore point. To do that:
(1) Set Windows to show hidden files and folders, if you haven't done this before:
(2) Download and install one of the following programs:
- ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
- Shadow Copy View: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shadow_copy_view.html
(3) Start up the program and look for a restore point created today. If you find one, , you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:
\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\your.profile
(4) Check for a sessionstore.jsonlz4 file, and any potentially useful files in the sessionstore-backups folder and export them out to you live Windows desktop (not the desktop folder in the restore point)
Anything to work with there?
rjc7394 said
I tried the "Restore Firefox" option but that didn't help anything and it made my dropdown menus disappear.
If that was the Refresh feature, your pre-Refresh profile folder was moved to the Windows desktop in a folder named Old Firefox Data. You can ignore that for now, but to get your menu bar back, see: Restore the Menu bar in Firefox.