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Possibly Corrupted or damaged JSON file means I can't Sessionstore

DorianOtten
DorianOtten
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Hi,

I started my PC as usual this morning and, rather than get all my many tabs pup up (I set it to restore previous session), I get some search engine called Ad-Aware that I've never heard of. I'm pretty sure I didn't install anything yesterday so I go to C:\Users\*****\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\****.default\sessionstore-backups to back up my sessionstore before closing and trying again. I do so and try to launch FF again and same issue. I replace sessionstore with the latest one from the backups (not my first rodeo so I just reflexively copy the biggest one to store on the D drive out of harms way) and I get the same ONE tab with the search engine. I've done this many times before (I have an embarassing amount of tabs open that I've been trying to sort through) so I know how to. But to spite the fact the sessionstore file is obviously large enough to have all my proper tabs saved it only opens 2 instances of the search engine and the options tab.

Out of curiosty I use an old "previous" file that was still on my D drive and that restores fine (only issue is it's over a month old and all the tabs I've closed and new ones opened are obviously no there either)

I mentioned I just grab the biggest backup file (in retrospect I realise this is a bad habit) and I remember that the one I grabbed was .01 MB bigger than the others. There was no reason for it to be as they were all approximately created from the same time. I figure that it was these 2 new Ad-Aware search engine tabs.

Anyhoo; long story short I need to know if there's any way to check or edit a JSON file to see if there's either a way to restore it or, failing that, to copy the web addresses to a new, open session.

I've tried:

https://json-csv.com/

and

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

Also the only extensions I have are a tab counter and an alphebetizer though the second has been deactivated for a while

Thanks for any help

Hi, I started my PC as usual this morning and, rather than get all my many tabs pup up (I set it to restore previous session), I get some search engine called Ad-Aware that I've never heard of. I'm pretty sure I didn't install anything yesterday so I go to C:\Users\*****\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\****.default\sessionstore-backups to back up my sessionstore before closing and trying again. I do so and try to launch FF again and same issue. I replace sessionstore with the latest one from the backups (not my first rodeo so I just reflexively copy the biggest one to store on the D drive out of harms way) and I get the same ONE tab with the search engine. I've done this many times before (I have an embarassing amount of tabs open that I've been trying to sort through) so I know how to. But to spite the fact the sessionstore file is obviously large enough to have all my proper tabs saved it only opens 2 instances of the search engine and the options tab. Out of curiosty I use an old "previous" file that was still on my D drive and that restores fine (only issue is it's over a month old and all the tabs I've closed and new ones opened are obviously no there either) I mentioned I just grab the biggest backup file (in retrospect I realise this is a bad habit) and I remember that the one I grabbed was .01 MB bigger than the others. There was no reason for it to be as they were all approximately created from the same time. I figure that it was these 2 new Ad-Aware search engine tabs. Anyhoo; long story short I need to know if there's any way to check or edit a JSON file to see if there's either a way to restore it or, failing that, to copy the web addresses to a new, open session. I've tried: https://json-csv.com/ and https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html Also the only extensions I have are a tab counter and an alphebetizer though the second has been deactivated for a while Thanks for any help

Chosen solution

When you do a "live restore" (by swapping files) is "Restore Previous Session" available -- or grayed or hidden?

Anything on the Recently Closed Windows list?

I just updated the Scrounger on Sunday, and it sounds as though it "works" but that you need to somehow push the last session state into the current one. I don't have a tool for that; I assumed Restore Previous Session would restore it. Hmm.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (6)

DorianOtten
DorianOtten Question owner
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And sorry should have said thst when I tried the scrounger says that only those ad-aware windows (they were two tabs in one window each) are there and "tabs from last session state" it shows my first tab from my real browser session (screenshot attached). In the load file it has http://securedsearch.lavasoft.com several times at the start and it DOES contain my tabs (can be found by searching "http" but it doesn't spit them out as tabs in the display. I also can't just copy paste them from there since I have too many and the page becomes unresponsive.

And the excel one says that it's not a JSON file because it should start with curly brackets (but it also says that with my working session store.....)

Thanks again

Modified by DorianOtten

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

Chosen Solution

When you do a "live restore" (by swapping files) is "Restore Previous Session" available -- or grayed or hidden?

Anything on the Recently Closed Windows list?

I just updated the Scrounger on Sunday, and it sounds as though it "works" but that you need to somehow push the last session state into the current one. I don't have a tool for that; I assumed Restore Previous Session would restore it. Hmm.

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

If the Last Session State is incomplete, try the older scrounger. It bypasses the JSON structure and literally scrounges the URLs from Last Session State. Not that this aids you in restoring automatically, but you have the HTML document as a backup.

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger_20180826.html

If you want to share a file that doesn't read out fully in the new scrounger, let me know, since I only tested on a tiny session.

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

I rolled the Scrounger changes back. The new version isn't fully debugged yet. The older version should find the missing URLs.

DorianOtten
DorianOtten Question owner
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oops.... duplicate post

Modified by DorianOtten

DorianOtten
DorianOtten Question owner
more options

jscher2000 said

When you do a "live restore" (by swapping files) is "Restore Previous Session" available -- or grayed or hidden? Anything on the Recently Closed Windows list? I just updated the Scrounger on Sunday, and it sounds as though it "works" but that you need to somehow push the last session state into the current one. I don't have a tool for that; I assumed Restore Previous Session would restore it. Hmm.

Hi,

Yep that worked. It wasn't showing up for me earlier but I think that was because I had closed out the second window with the other search engine page which became my last action so it was grayed out. I swapped out the sessionstore file again and started over. This time I didn't close the second window and the option was there. Thanks for the help and for getting back to me so quickly.

Thanks again and enjoy the holidays