ALL ICONS ARE MISSING FROM OLD AND NEW BOOKMARKS... HELP!! WIN XP FF 15
Not only have I lost ALL bookmarks from last 5 days, Something has happened where ALL of the old bookmarks-and ones that I have added today are ALL missing icons.
The old ones were in a json file that was a backup. When put back on FF-no more icons! I tried making an HTML version of the JSON file but it has a MOZILLA icon on it and it doesn't work when I try to use it.
All they have is a white square with dotted lines around.
ALL NEW bookmarks have NO icons...I don't understand.
I have WIN XP and have Firefox 15.
I am NO techie so any solution PLEASE be simple and step-by-step.
PLEASE-is there ANY way to fix this???
THXXX
Chosen solution
First of all make sure you have backups of bookmarks that you make yourself, and put them somewhere safe outside Firefox paths (The Windows Desktop will do for now) In fact I strongly advice you go further than that and back up the whole Firefox profile immediately. See
- Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles
- Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer
The immediate priority is t make safe any bookmarks that you do have. It is important to realise that restoring bookmarks wipes out the existing internally stored bookmarks, and that Firefox's internal backups may only cover a few days.
You may find that icons come back if when you visit a site from a bookmark you click the star to first to unbookmark and then again to bookmark. That is not a good workaround, but at least it is safe and not endangering any stored bookmarks.
Make the backups then we will try later to solve the problem of missing icons.
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Chosen Solution
First of all make sure you have backups of bookmarks that you make yourself, and put them somewhere safe outside Firefox paths (The Windows Desktop will do for now) In fact I strongly advice you go further than that and back up the whole Firefox profile immediately. See
- Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles
- Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer
The immediate priority is t make safe any bookmarks that you do have. It is important to realise that restoring bookmarks wipes out the existing internally stored bookmarks, and that Firefox's internal backups may only cover a few days.
You may find that icons come back if when you visit a site from a bookmark you click the star to first to unbookmark and then again to bookmark. That is not a good workaround, but at least it is safe and not endangering any stored bookmarks.
Make the backups then we will try later to solve the problem of missing icons.
Problems with bookmarks and history not working properly can be caused by a corrupted places.sqlite database file.
You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox Profile Folder.
i lost my desktop. administration system & applications
John99 THANKS for a SOLUTION that RESTORED my bookmark ICONS!
Visiting the sites did it! THXXXX ;)
Cor-el-just OPENING those pages you sent looks SO confusing!!!
How on earth am I supposed to read that places.sqlite file? I don't know what is supposed to open that file to read it-IE? ADOBE? WORD?
Sorry, but that's as far as I got.
I tried uploading the image here of the file in the C: pathway but it keep getting an error message.
Very technical and complicated stuff you sent me but THXX anyway...
Glad we helped and that it is working again.
Unfortunately in some circumstances the solution suggested by cor-el is just about the only thing that will work.
When the places.sqlitedatabase is working it is intended to be opened with Firefox, and the results and detailed content may be viewed, sorted, backedup and edited from your Bookmarks Library.
Cor-el's solution would have required deleting files, without any need to look at the content. There are specialist SQL editors available to manipulate such files.
If you do experiment with using a SQL editor I suggest trying it with spare copies of a database, and ensuring you keep backups before making any changes to a database that may need to be used. I know from my own attempts that it is easy to mess up SQL database files.
John-just reading that confuses me! I WISH I was even somewhat tech savvy. THXX for that simple solution.
You can also consider to backup your personal data that Firefox stores in the Firefox Profile Folder.
this will restore icons to bookmarks?
No, icons that are missing can only be restored by using that bookmark and visit the website.
A JSON backup doesn't store favicons, so anytime that you restore a JSON backup or delete places.sqlite to recover from problems you will lose all bookmark icons.
You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder