I've lost everything I was working on when prefs.js overwrote itself.
I was having a problem deleting an entry in the prefs.js file. It kept rewriting itself to what it had been before I deleted it. So I renamed it to see if it would get recreated entirely. It did get recreated, but it was not the same any more. It was completely different. So I renamed my copy back to the original file name. When I opened Firefox, it wrote over itself again with the completely different copy. I've now lost all my themes. My SessionManager add-on completely disappeared along with all my session information. All the tabs I had open are gone and I don't know what they were. I reinstalled SessionManager, but no sessions are found, not even the ones I had saved.
Can I recover my themes and sessions? Can I restore the old prefs.js file to the way it was.
Chosen solution
I was so upset that I left. I went shopping. When I came back, the first thing I did was install the theme I had when everything went kablooie. Then I checked the registry to find any recent pages that Firefox may have gone to. No data was kept in the registry for recent pages. I installed my Session Manager and found a button in the TabMix options to convert the sessions to Session Manager format. I chose to find the file to convert. I had gone into the profile and found a session.rdf file that appeared to have my opened tabs listed. I pointed to that file and I was given 5 sessions to convert. I converted all of them.
I still couldn't get the session manager to work as it always had. The icon on my toolbar never woke up and was unusable. After looking at my notes from a previous problem, I found that I haven't had the Session Manager installed. I remembered that Session Manager had been included in the latest version of Tab Mix. I disabled my Session Manager add-on and used the one built into Tab Mix. I deselected the option to use Firefox's built in session restore and now my opened tabs are back and it is behaving as it was before.
I've checked all my add-ons and plug-ins to a list I had from a previous mess-up and it appears I haven't lost any of them after all. I then went to add the themes back that I had lost and they were all back. I hadn't even tried getting them back yet.
I've just checked my prefs.js file and it appears to be the one I had before the problem arose. I have no explanation as to why everything came back. It might even be divine intervention. It's working now and I'm thrilled.
Now if I can just get all that time back.....
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Which security software (firewall, anti-virus) do you have?
Some security software may protect files in the Firefox Profile Folder against changes. That may also be the cause of the changes and disappearance to the other data.
See also:
Chosen Solution
I was so upset that I left. I went shopping. When I came back, the first thing I did was install the theme I had when everything went kablooie. Then I checked the registry to find any recent pages that Firefox may have gone to. No data was kept in the registry for recent pages. I installed my Session Manager and found a button in the TabMix options to convert the sessions to Session Manager format. I chose to find the file to convert. I had gone into the profile and found a session.rdf file that appeared to have my opened tabs listed. I pointed to that file and I was given 5 sessions to convert. I converted all of them.
I still couldn't get the session manager to work as it always had. The icon on my toolbar never woke up and was unusable. After looking at my notes from a previous problem, I found that I haven't had the Session Manager installed. I remembered that Session Manager had been included in the latest version of Tab Mix. I disabled my Session Manager add-on and used the one built into Tab Mix. I deselected the option to use Firefox's built in session restore and now my opened tabs are back and it is behaving as it was before.
I've checked all my add-ons and plug-ins to a list I had from a previous mess-up and it appears I haven't lost any of them after all. I then went to add the themes back that I had lost and they were all back. I hadn't even tried getting them back yet.
I've just checked my prefs.js file and it appears to be the one I had before the problem arose. I have no explanation as to why everything came back. It might even be divine intervention. It's working now and I'm thrilled.
Now if I can just get all that time back.....