topic Re: Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs in Discussions

Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs

garyfirestorm — Mon, 06 May 2024 23:44:10 GMT

After I opened Firefox, it prompted me to update Firefox by downloading the new version.
Once I installed the update, it simply decided to ignore my previous tabs/session.
I do have a desktop folder that says 'Old Firefox Data' but I am not sure how to restore the tabs from it.

Re: Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs

jscher2000 — Mon, 06 May 2024 23:50:51 GMT

Sorry to hear about this problem. Did Firefox say it was also going to perform a Refresh or Tune-up? That's the process which creates the Old Firefox Data folder.

Anyway, could you check the Old Firefox Data for a few different files:

[Desktop]\Old Firefox Data\profile.folder\sessionstore.jsonlz4 => created during a normal shutdown

[Desktop]\Old Firefox Data\profile.folder\sessionstore-backups folder => files typically would be from previous sessions, but there might be a snapshot file created during the update

Note: profile.folder is a unique name for your computer, commonly 8 random alphanumeric characters followed by a dot followed by default-release.

Let us know what you find which is from the right time frame.

Re: Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs

jscher2000 — Mon, 06 May 2024 23:53:38 GMT

As a little more background, .jsonlz4 and .baklz4 files are compressed using LZ4 compression. I have a tool to decompress them and then you can list out their contents as a page of clickable links. See:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

After loading the file into the page, try the "Scrounge URLs" button. If you don't get results within 15 seconds, the script probably crashed. Try again in a new tab or in another browser. If you want to archive the list of links for future reference, click the "Save HTML" button.

Re: Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs

garyfirestorm — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:01:55 GMT

Thanks a lot! This did solve my problem.

Re: Firefox asked to reinstall then proceeded to forget previous tabs

Mycrobi — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:57:59 GMT

This is only kind of a workaround. Would be nice to have an official update to resolve the auto closing tabs.