OT: Firefox "WTF?!?" situation

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I came home from school today, booted up my computer, started Firefox..... start page still set at this forum, nothing strange there, but somehow all my bookmarks have disappeared! The Toolbar is empty, so is the folder, where the hell did they go?

My Administrator account (which is not my main account, it's a safety measure) still has it's bookmarks..... I don't know what's going on here, does anyone know what the hell happened?

[Captain Kwok]

Sometimes Firefox crashes out and that happens. It's happened to me about 4 or 5 times. I'm smart enough these days to backup my bookmarks in a different location for this reason. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Alneyan]

Are you using Windows XP with their drive option thingy activated? I don't recall the name, but you should be able to find out what it is under Properies => Strategies, or some such.

This option is activated by default, and as Windows warns you, it can lead to data corruption. I know my computer had a nasty tendency to crash, leading to loss of data on reboot, and Firefox/Thunderbird were particularly badly hit. Turning the option off helped somewhat, though I cannot swear it reduce such occurrences to zero.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Ah, well..... I know what my most important bookmarks were, so I should be able to restore them, it's just that I was surprised, mostly. And for some reason Firefox now starts at just over half the size of the screen, instead of the maximized window it used to start in, but that's just an annoyance. Ah well. Time to restore my bookmarks.....

[Arkcon]

Poke around the relevant directories. I've seen a bookmarks.bak file or something like that in there. Also look in the cookies file, or history file for sites you've forgotten.

[Captain Kwok]

When I've had this problem happen, it not only kills the bookmark.html file, but also the backup file too.

[Arkcon]

Well, now there's an ouch. I often email my bookmarks list to my yahoo mail account, as a backup and so that I'll have my bookmarks when I'm elsewhere. I haven't done that in a while, I should go do that now, just in case.

I'm not using the latest version of Firefox, and I'm not using XP. From what I've heard on this forum, that's the only reason for the problem, yes?

Sure do hope so. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[EDIT]

Alright, what's up with these forums? I can't get here by my bookmarks, or by clicking on the links to SE4 forumns, starting from the Shrapnelgames web page. I had to do a Google search for my handle to reach this thread. Meh. Time to purge my cookies, I guess.

[Captain Kwok]

No, I had the problem occur with earlier versions of Firefox and XP SP1 as well.

[Fyron]

I have never had such a crash myself, XP or otherwise. Had FF crashes, but none that lost bookmarks or other data.

[Renegade 13]

Same with me.

[Captain Kwok]

*sigh*

I just experienced a Firefox crash earier today that cleared out my settings and bookmarks.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Join the club http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

edit: And now my Admin account has also lost its bookmarks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

[narf poit chez BOOM]

...Virus?

[Will]

I've only had Firefox lose bookmarks and settings that were added in the previous session. Since I can sometimes have it open for a few weeks at a time, the lossage can vary... Never had it actually delete files before, though.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

You might have a point there..... Time to see if AVG will properly update now..... It's been pestering me with messages for quite some time, but till now it's failed at every single update attempt I made, so I gave it up. I think it's time to try an update again. Oh well, let's hope I have better luck this time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Captain Kwok]

It doesn't delete the files, just overwrites them with a blank bookmark.html file instead. Normally, when you close Firefox, it saves your bookmarks and all is well. In this case, a program error during closing presents this and it saves the bank bookmarks.html file. I don't keep a lot of bookmarks myself, but I do back them up elsewhere from time to time just in case. This can also happen to the preferences file as well, same sort of idea.

Now sometimes when Thunderbird has borks out during closing, it actually creates a duplicate of your "Documents and Settings" directory, usually named "documenps and Settings".

Anyhow the more recent 1.5 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird are borking out more regularly for me. Hopefully those annoying feedback agents will help sort out the problems.