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New PC, downloaded Mozilla, and can't find my old bookmarks. Help!

Bought a new PC over Christmas, and it came with Microsoft Edge, which is okay. I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, because I've loved using it over the year's, and all of my saved websites, and bookmarks are important. I can't find a single, solitary favorite, or bookmark, and I've tried all of the troubleshooting. I need help, thanks!

Bought a new PC over Christmas, and it came with Microsoft Edge, which is okay. I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, because I've loved using it over the year's, and all of my saved websites, and bookmarks are important. I can't find a single, solitary favorite, or bookmark, and I've tried all of the troubleshooting. I need help, thanks!

All Replies (3)

Do you still have your old PC, or do you have a backup of its hard drive? If you have that, we can help you find your old Firefox data.

Or did you set up the Sync service when you were using your old computer, to copy your Firefox data to Mozilla's servers? Note: if you set up a Firefox Account for Sync, that's different than your support forum account.

jscher2000, thanks for replying. I may have synced it previously, but I honestly cannot remember because I had the PC for almost ten year's, and the OS was XP lol. I do have the old hard drive saved on an external drive, so I guess I can always go that route, unless we try the syncing.

Thanks!

Hmm, the problem with trying to connect to an old Sync account is whether you remember your login information for your Firefox account (not the same as your support site account). If you don't, then you'll need to mine the old hard drive.

When looking at the old drive, the first step is to set Windows to show hidden files and folders. See: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files

Then find the old Documents and Settings folder and drill down as follows:

d:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

At that location, you might find only one semi-randomly-named folder, you might find multiple folders from different eras. You'll want to find the most recently updated profile folder, and check inside for a bookmarkbackups folder. For your convenient, copy the most recent one or two backups to your desktop.

Those files there can be restored to your new Firefox using the method described in this article: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer.

Please note that causes a complete replacement: any existing bookmarks in your Firefox will be wiped. If you have new bookmarks you need to preserve before restoring the backup, add two steps: