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Restore session is unavailable, please help!

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by avadamr

avadamr
avadamr
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I read other questions here about this problem, and tried going to the sessionstore-backups, but it has only 2 files - baklz4 and jsonlz4, and both of them are updated to the most recent time (which is after the previous session I was looking to restore). I tried Jefferson Scher's Scounger tool, but the files show only the tabs that are opened after the Restore Session was gone. I have had Sync turned on, and went to Synced Tabs, but no tabs or anything are there. I had over 200 tabs opened in 3 windows, each. I know, too many. Whenever my laptop went slow, I usually terminated Firefox through Task Manager and then restarted and from there, restored previous session. This time, I was also uninstalling a program from my laptop (while Firefox was closed), and the program opened Firefox to ask why I was uninstalling the program. No page was opened to give the option to restore previous session. I went to History, no option to restore previous session was there. The last time all my tabs were opened was 1 hour ago. I was thinking of restoring Windows to the last backup to see if that would work, but not sure if that will work. Do I have a chance of restoring my previous session with all my tabs? Please help! I will donate a modest sum for successful recovery of my previous session! Thank you very much!!!

I read other questions here about this problem, and tried going to the sessionstore-backups, but it has only 2 files - baklz4 and jsonlz4, and both of them are updated to the most recent time (which is after the previous session I was looking to restore). I tried Jefferson Scher's Scounger tool, but the files show only the tabs that are opened after the Restore Session was gone. I have had Sync turned on, and went to Synced Tabs, but no tabs or anything are there. I had over 200 tabs opened in 3 windows, each. I know, too many. Whenever my laptop went slow, I usually terminated Firefox through Task Manager and then restarted and from there, restored previous session. This time, I was also uninstalling a program from my laptop (while Firefox was closed), and the program opened Firefox to ask why I was uninstalling the program. No page was opened to give the option to restore previous session. I went to History, no option to restore previous session was there. The last time all my tabs were opened was 1 hour ago. I was thinking of restoring Windows to the last backup to see if that would work, but not sure if that will work. Do I have a chance of restoring my previous session with all my tabs? Please help! I will donate a modest sum for successful recovery of my previous session! Thank you very much!!!

All Replies (3)

FFus3r
FFus3r
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see the answers here:

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You can check in Windows Explorer if there is a previous version of the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file available.

You can look at this utility to browse System Restore points.

avadamr
avadamr Question owner
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Thank you cor-el. I used System Restore Explorer to find and copy session back-ups to a different drive, and then tried to use the method outlined in other topics with the same issue to restore my session, but to no avail - specifically, this one: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1189759

I deleted the session backups in the session-backups folder in the main Profile folder, and replaced the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file with the ones I copied from the previous Windows restore points. There were previous.jsonlz4, recovery.baklz4, recovery.jsonlz4, and upgrade.jsonlz4(with numbers at the end), and I tried to replace the main sessionstore with each one, each time, to no avail. There was no option to restore my session. I tried copying the same files from different Win Restore points, thinking that maybe one restore point was corrupted, but none worked.

Also, when I tried to Jeff's Scrounger tool to analyze each file, from several Windows restore points, and there were about 10-20 pages decoded, but the rest of the file was filled with the unreadable symbol - square with 4 zeroes partially inside the square. My total session was 3 pages and about 600 tabs opened. I know, it sounds crazy. Could that be the problem?

On October 2, my Firefox updated to 62.0.3. from 62.0.2. Could this also be the cause? But if that was the cause, then Scrounger should have been able to interpret my session file completely instead of the unreadable symbol.