Sync not restoring bookmarks after a windows reinstall
In the past when I reinstalled Windows and then Firefox, I would sign into my account and all my bookmarks/addons etc. would automatically get reinstalled. Today I had to reinstall Windows and when I logged into my firefox account, nothing happened. Does Mozilla no longer keep these settings for us? I don't have any other devices to sync off of and never have, so where did all those settings come from when I did previous reinstalls?
All Replies (2)
Hi
Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service.
It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service.
If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article.
If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.
You can check if you have a C:\Windows.old folder with your Firefox profile data.