This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

My Windows XP crashed. I installed Win 7 on another HD. I want my bookmarks back from my XP version. How can I get them?

more options

Something went wrong with my Win XP Pro System. I tossed in another hard drive and installed Windows 7 onto it. I am now using the XP version hard drive as a slave (temporarily) so that I can get back my personal stuff that's on it. One thing I really want is my bookmarks. I did save my bookmarks folder as an html file somewhere. Opened it and saved it to my favorites, but I can't even find the original copy of that. I did find the JSON files for up until the 15th of October, but am afraid installing from that one will mess up the bookmarks I have now.

Eventually I will install Windows XP Pro (when I find my disk) onto another old drive and run repair off the installation disk to fix this one (XP Pro Slave disk), but would rather not be hassled with that right now. Any solution?

Please and thank you,,, David Rice

Something went wrong with my Win XP Pro System. I tossed in another hard drive and installed Windows 7 onto it. I am now using the XP version hard drive as a slave (temporarily) so that I can get back my personal stuff that's on it. One thing I really want is my bookmarks. I did save my bookmarks folder as an html file somewhere. Opened it and saved it to my favorites, but I can't even find the original copy of that. I did find the JSON files for up until the 15th of October, but am afraid installing from that one will mess up the bookmarks I have now. Eventually I will install Windows XP Pro (when I find my disk) onto another old drive and run repair off the installation disk to fix this one (XP Pro Slave disk), but would rather not be hassled with that right now. Any solution? Please and thank you,,, David Rice

All Replies (3)

more options

Hello,

On your slave drive, go to:

  • <Drive letter>:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Firefox profile, ends with ".default">

The places.sqlite file will contain your bookmarks. Either go to "%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Firefox profile, should also end with .default> in Windows Explorer, or in Firefox go to the about:support page and click Show Folder. Close Firefox if it is open, and backup your current places.sqlite file in the Windows 7 Firefox profile folder in case you need something in there, and paste in the one from your XP profile.

Please see the help articles for more information (first article tells you what each of the files stores in case you want to transfer them as well):

A good idea might be to export your bookmarks afterward as well, see the article Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks.


For future reference, if you want to back up your extensions and preferences more easily, you can use the following which will perform those tasks for you:

The files that these two create will quickly restore your information in the future if something happens to your profile.


You can also consider setting up Firefox sync between your computers once you get your XP computer fixed to transfer your settings easier:

more options

See also:

XP:

  • C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

Windows 7:

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

Note that the "AppData" folder in Windows Vista and later Window 7+ versions and the "Application Data" folder in XP/Win2K are hidden folders.

more options

I'm not sure if it was clear from the above, but either replacing places.sqlite or restoring an old JSON-format bookmark backup will roll your bookmarks back to the date of the respective file.

To preserve newer bookmarks, you need to export them before and then import them after that process (unlike a restore, an import is additive). These are the steps for those two phases: