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Fresh WIndows 10 install and firefox sync forgotten password deleted all my bookmarks!!

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  • Last reply by Widget21

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After 8 or 9 years building my bookmarks on FF, a recent Windows 10 fresh install and a FF sync have wreaked havoc with my bookmarks. Assuming that changing a password was the most innocuous thing one can do to restore a forgotten password to sync these bookmarks, I get the shock of my life that all my bookmarks have been deleted on the server because of this change of password!!! No warning whatsoever!!! How on earth am I going to restore these bookmarks from a back up if they don't exist on a new OS. I did make a Windows image back up of previous Windows 7 but I can't see how i can just pick the FF backup without restoring the whole OS!! Anyone can help with this, please? Why on earth can't I access these bookmarks from the servers?

After 8 or 9 years building my bookmarks on FF, a recent Windows 10 fresh install and a FF sync have wreaked havoc with my bookmarks. Assuming that changing a password was the most innocuous thing one can do to restore a forgotten password to sync these bookmarks, I get the shock of my life that all my bookmarks have been deleted on the server because of this change of password!!! No warning whatsoever!!! How on earth am I going to restore these bookmarks from a back up if they don't exist on a new OS. I did make a Windows image back up of previous Windows 7 but I can't see how i can just pick the FF backup without restoring the whole OS!! Anyone can help with this, please? Why on earth can't I access these bookmarks from the servers?

Chosen solution

i don't think that those backup containers have any particular encryption. there are tutorials on the internet how to extract particular data out of them: http://www.howtogeek.com/125704/how-to-extract-individual-files-from-a-windows-7-system-image-backup/

if you manage to do so, you'll want to create a copy of your old profile folder - this should usually be located on the drive under \Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data

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hi, before you start the password reset procedure at https://accounts.firefox.com/reset_password you get warned that this will wipe all sync data on the servers! this is inevitable because the sync system is implemented with data security as primary focus: your password is the only way to decrypt the data once it leaves your device - if it's gone then the data is useless as well! (also sync is not intended as a backup system but to keep multiple connected devices on a same level)

how exactly did you create the backup of your old windows disk?

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Hi philipp Thanks for your help. I've used Windows backup tool for that and the resulting file is encrypted so only a Windows restoring tool would be able to decrypt. Are you saying that there might be a way to retrieve application data files from a Windows backup? Cheers!

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Chosen Solution

i don't think that those backup containers have any particular encryption. there are tutorials on the internet how to extract particular data out of them: http://www.howtogeek.com/125704/how-to-extract-individual-files-from-a-windows-7-system-image-backup/

if you manage to do so, you'll want to create a copy of your old profile folder - this should usually be located on the drive under \Users\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data

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Thanks for your help! That did it!!!! I should stop assuming and start googling! :-)

Thanks again!