Bookmarks are like Gold in the online world. It can take years to compile a list of precious bookmarks and it is a huge catastrophe for most users if those bookmarks happen to be gone. There are several scenarios that I can think out of my head that would make the bookmarks disappear in Firefox.
The file could be corrupted, an extension or third party program could have moved, renamed or changed the file so that Firefox can’t read it anymore or your hard disk could have a read error in that sector. Don’t loose all hope yet, we have a good probability to get the Firefox bookmarks back.
First, close all instances of Firefox immediately and make sure that no Firefox tasks are open in the Task Manager. Make also sure that no third party tools that manipulate Firefox are open. (Browse this website with Opera or save the information to your hard drive in a text file).
Firefox creates backups of your bookmarks. I hear sounds of relief already. The backups are located in your Firefox profile folder in the subfolder “bookmarkbackups”. A new backup is generated every day and the last two backups are available. Before we take a look at the backups we should check if the file bookmarks.html is located in the Firefox profile folder.
If that file is there try to open or copy it. Both is probably not possible. You could try to run scandisk on the drive and see if that fixes the problem but it won’t most of the time. Try to delete the file and replace it with the latest backup of your bookmarks that is located in the bookmarksbackup folder. You have to rename the backup to bookmarks.html if you want that Firefox recognizes it.
Another option would be to check if you are using the correct Firefox profile. Remember that every profile has it’s own set of bookmarks. Close Firefox if you have not done so already and open the run prompt in Windows. Type firefox.exe -profilemanager to open the Firefox profile manager. If you see more than one profile try to load the default profile first and see if your bookmarks are back.
If you are the only user delete the other profile if you do not need it.
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Here is another method:
1) Create a folder “Mozilla Backups” (or similar) on one of your local drives.
2) Buy a new, good quality USB key or use another reliable USB drive. Create a second folder there “Mozilla Backups”.
3) In Mozilla, click Help / Get More Extensions. Search “FEBE” and install.
4) Restart and open FEBE Options via Tools / Addons. Click on Folder tab. Set drive and folder path there.
5) Run from Tools / FEBE / Perform Backup. FEBE will back up all your extensions and bookmarks. It will create a report page in a new tab.
6) Copy this “Mozilla Backups” folder to the USB key. Let it write over the folder there.
7) Create a routine for backups. And rest.
Note: if you run more than one profile it is a good idea to create seperate backup folders for these.
I use this neat plug-in for Firefox called Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer which “automatically synchronizes your bookmarks between two or more computers running Firefox.” (Foxmarks website)
This way if something does happen you can your bookmarks from the website.
Just something to look into
http://www.foxmarks.com/