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Why doesn't 'Show windows and tabs from last time' work anymore? Windows 7 Firefox version 38.0.1

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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It's been working fine the whole time Firefox has been installed - over a year, probably longer (so yes I have show windows tabs selected and no I don't have delete browsing history on exit selected). Was working fine this morning then suddenly after reopening and closing a couple of times today I got a popup warning I was about to close multiple tabs... don't usually get that so I was nervous, so I immediately opened Firefox again and just got a new tab, none of my usual tabs were open! Can not think of a single thing that happened during the hour or so before I reopened it the last time and it was working. I always simply click on the x to close all tabs and when I open Firefox again there are all my tabs - why would it suddenly stop working today? I've spent ages looking at other responses to this, I've gone to about:config and tried to check it is all as should be - but basically I have no idea what I'm doing and the bottom line is how can it be working one minute then suddenly stop?

It's been working fine the whole time Firefox has been installed - over a year, probably longer (so yes I have show windows tabs selected and no I don't have delete browsing history on exit selected). Was working fine this morning then suddenly after reopening and closing a couple of times today I got a popup warning I was about to close multiple tabs... don't usually get that so I was nervous, so I immediately opened Firefox again and just got a new tab, none of my usual tabs were open! Can not think of a single thing that happened during the hour or so before I reopened it the last time and it was working. I always simply click on the x to close all tabs and when I open Firefox again there are all my tabs - why would it suddenly stop working today? I've spent ages looking at other responses to this, I've gone to about:config and tried to check it is all as should be - but basically I have no idea what I'm doing and the bottom line is how can it be working one minute then suddenly stop?

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Make it a habit and use "Firefox > Exit" (Windows: Firefox/File > Exit; Mac: Firefox > Quit Firefox; Linux: Firefox/File > Quit) to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox title bar.

Things can go wrong if there are still other windows open and you use the close X on the title bar.


You can check the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox Profile Folder to see if there is a file that has session data from a previous Firefox session. You can backup the session files in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox Profile Folder to make sure not to lose possible important session data.

  • previous.js (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.js from previous session that was loaded successfully)
  • recovery.js (latest version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
  • recovery.bak (previous version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
  • upgrade.js-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from sessionstore-backups to the main profile as sessionstore.js to replace the current file (make a backup copy of the current sessionstore.js).