Hi Jean,Firefox 26 still uses session files.

Using the history menu options for recently closed windows or tabs; or if it is not greyed out restore previous History or navigating to about:sessionrestore are the best methods if they are available.

You could try backing up or renaming all the sessionstore.js and related files that you have and manually try them. It sounds as if you tried that previously.

• see also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_Restore
  http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sessionstore.js

The other alternative is wading through the entries in the History manager,but that is not too easy if tabs were open for a long time, and the pages may not be in the state you expect from the last use.

Thanks a lot John for your help.

Jean,
Thanks for posting back. Glad to have helped.

I would also add as tips for those having similar problems

• Always try to close Firefox using the Firefox Button or other Firefox menu options. (The Australis hotdog button is fast approaching). You are more likely to get an orderly shutdown.
• Consider using Bookmarks more often,
  • They are much more robust than sessinstore or History.
  • Bookmarks have some automated redundancy backup, and manual backup is also possible.

Thanks John.

In fact, the 'Conduit' app which was embeeded in another install and that I did not noticed unfortunately changed my default home page as well as the option 'When Firefox starts' which was...A terrific joke ! Please let Mozilla know about that as this is IMPORTANT : I hope that no others app will start to recreate this ugly situation & firefox should not let this re happened.

I had a 'crash' already and knew about the <sessionrestore.js> but yesterday backuped immediately the...Wrong 'Firefox' folder not the '...\AppData\Roaming\' one ! That was the reason I asked the forum about the version 26.0 as I could not found the <sessionrestore.js> file. Furthermore if I had used the 'about:sessionrestore' that might have solved my issue.

...Worked hard last night in order to recover my stuff as I lost nearly a month of saved tabs - and didn t finished yet !

I m still convinced that like me, many others firefox users have many windows and tabs open at the same time - while some are not geek isn t ? From my point of view, I will suggest that a future version of firefox should have an easy mechanisms included in order to automatically backup the <sessionrestore.js> file on a desired basis. That will do the trick with more efficience and security. What Firefox developers are thinking of that !???

Thanks again for your help.

Regards, Jean

Jean, More info & comment, some of it may help, now or in future.

I think this may get covered with the replacement of firefox Sync. I am not involved with Development, but I understand development of Sync has ceased and the replacement is likely to be a proper web server backup system. Or at least that was what I thought not so sure after looking at

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/PiCL
  • https://wiki.mozilla.org/User_Services/Sync

Once you have found your profile and the various sessionstore files (some may be numbered, or with a .bak extenions) you should back them up. You may get useful tabs out of them if you try renaming them and running them in a new additional test profile.

It is even possible to run two instances of Firefox simultaneously using different profiles. Use the -no-remote argument on the secondary instances. That may help in sorting out the tabs you find.

Furthermore as a windows user it is also possible to use previous versions of files. Those are available by right clicking files, but ensure you back up the originals first in case they are needed.

Using multiple profiles is not something we shout about on this forum. It is I think considered too advanced. It does have some dangers in that you may accidentally delete profiles for instance. It is however possible to manually backup profiles, and that may be a good precaution to take. I would also strongly suggest that you follow this good practice (At least until you are proficient enough to manually recreate and modify profiles)

1. Normally use the locations suggested by Firefox
   It is easier and safer
   • Always use an empty folder
     Other contents disappear when the profile is removed
   • Never nest profiles within each other
     As above,delete mother, lose child also
2. Do not rename profiles
   Confusing, profile names and folder names mismatch
3. Do not delete profiles
   Just remove shortcuts if not in use. Delete the wrong one and you lose settings, passwords & bookmarks etc

Uses of multiple profiles include

• Testing, with clean or temporary profiles
• Different users, or different work type within the same OS account. That may include different bookmarks files &/or a different set of addons.
• Running multiple Firefox versions &/or multiple instances of Firefox simultaneously.

There are other methods of creating profiles but the best is probably to use Firefox's built-in profile manager.

Read up some of the articles, and if you want to try anything and are unsure post back.

• Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles
• Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_multiple_profiles_-_Firefox
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Testing_pre-release_versions#Installing_multiple_versions
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder#Create_a_new_profile_and_migrate_your_old_data

See also

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Opening_a_new_instance_of_your_Mozilla_application_with_another_profile
• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/previous-versions-files-faq#1TC=windows-vista

Not much we are able to do about the likes of Conduit but see

• Remove a toolbar that has taken over your Firefox search or home page

Also note a recent change with the Firefox Reset is that it does now attempt to preserve existing open tabs.