Lost/misdated history (dates in wrong bucket)
locking as a duplicate - continue here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/913673
Original problem: Lost history (dates either duplicated or placed in wrong date bucket).
What file contains the history in Firefox 4.0.1??
I'm running Firefox 4.0.1 on top of Windows XP Professional.
When I started up Firefox this morning, there was no history.
I've been having trouble with visited sites not being highlighted, hours-and-hours of history missing.
Is there a file that I can restore that will get my history back for me??
Thanks.
Barb
Wót the-edmeister
Wšykne wótegrona (4)
I did notice that I had a corrupted places.sqlite. I got an earlier version back from a backup. Still problems with misdating.
I tried uninstalling Firefox 4.0.1 and reinstalling Firefox 3.6.17.
I noticed that there was also a problem with misdated history in that version. While I was using it, some recent entries showed up on two or three different dates in the past in addition to the correct 'Today' entry.
I cleaned up places.sqlite ... removed all the duplicate and misdated entries and reinstalled Firefox 4.0.1.
My son just told me this morning that he's been seeing the calendar on the desktop displaying the wrong date. I thought that might be the cause of the problem so I installed D4 to keep the internal clock in the computer correct.
I found some software to backup the history (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html) and removed all the entries more than 90 days old. I did find one entry that I could not delete (possibly corrupted??) so I 'ignored' it.
I'm still having problems with misdated entries ... some entries will show up under 'Today' and also under 'Yesterday' or sometimes under a month several months ago.
QUESTIONS:
(1) What determines what 'visited' date a history entry uses ... the computer date and time?? the software??
(2) Is there any setting in Firefox 4.0.1 to only allow 90 days worth of history to be saved??
(3) Has there been any complaints of library/history being DUPLICATED; e.g., one correct entry on today and an additional entry on either 'Yesterday' or in some other month?? I don't want to create a new places.sqlite file and lose all my history only to find out that there's an ongoing problem that's being worked on.
Thanks.
Barb
PS: Oh, I'm not having the problem with incorrect highlighting any longer. There might have been a problem with the original installation of Firefox 4.0.1 and deleting and reinstalling seems to have taken care of that.
Wót moose53
UPDATE:
Apparently, the places.sqlite became corrupted sometime while using Firefox 3.*. When I did the Firefox 4.0.1 install/upgrade the corrupted places.sqlite just got pushed forward.
Well, using (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html) I was able to view the contents of places.sqlite. places.sqlite did NOT have duplicate history or misplaced history. That indicated that places.sqlite was so badly corrupted that it just wasn't functioning correctly.
I used (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html) to extract my history into two tab-delimited spreadsheets (first 4 months and last two months). NB: make sure to view/choose columns and check the "Title" column before you import places.sqlite. Then I converted the tab-delimited spreadsheets into Microsoft Office Excel Worksheets.
Then I deleted the places.sqlite, which got recreated when I launched Firefox.
Now, I have the ability to search my history through the two worksheets until I build up my history in Firefox again.
Solved.
Barb
PS: (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html) is absolutely fantastic software. It does not need to be installed. You just place the executable in your Firefox profile folder. Does what it says and does it well.
Wót moose53
I now have two days worth of history ... yesterday and today. Some entries are again showing a "Visit Date" on both days.
If I delete today's history from yesterday, both entries disappear.
If I view places.sqlite in (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html) , there is only one entry ... on the correct date.
I thought Ccleaner might be corrupting the places.sqlite, so I disabled all cleaning related to Firefox. The places.sqlite that I am using today has not been cleaned.
Barb
Wót moose53
See now /questions/913673#answer-301744