Finding Firefox Bookmarks After PC Recovery

[Westly32]

My pc crashed today, and left me no choice but to perform a recovery. I know that all files are saved before the recover and was wondering if browser bookmarks were also saved somwhere? I've looked through the FF folder in Program Files under My Computer, but I can't find anything marked Bookmarks.

Same thing with Opera. Are they wiped for good are are they also retained so that I can reload them after reinstalling the browsers?

[UncasMS]

for older Firefox versions search for: bookmarks.html
new FF calls them: places.sqlite

[Westly32]

Thanks, there's a sqlite3.dll in the Mozilla Firefox folder-is that the same?

[UncasMS]

nope
the dynamic link library is not what you look for

the "bookmark" file is somewhere in your "documents & settings" folder

[MilesAhead]

For future reference I recommend Mozbackup

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/download.php

Every now and then I save my Mozbackups folder to an external drive.
Plus it's cool if you move to another PC. All your addons are installed when you
do a restore to a new install of Firefox or Thunderbird.

[Westly32]

nope
the dynamic link library is not what you look for

the "bookmark" file is somewhere in your "documents & settings" folder

Exasperated heavy sigh...I've been searching thru the D&S folder for a couple of hours looking for anything labeled bookmark created today...
Thank you for the help. If I can't find it, I'll just have to rebuild as many favorites as I can remember from scratch.

[MilesAhead]

I'm assuming you are running XP. Try installing locate32 freeware. The default settings should index all local hard drives. After you do "update databases" just search. Much easier than manually searching. I use it on all my Windows flavors and turn Windows indexing off.

[Westly32]

^^Thanks I'll give that a try later. Right now, I'm bushed.

[UncasMS]

westly32,


the firefox bookmark file should be somewhere here:

=> documents & settings => user_xyz => application data => mozilla => firefox => profiles => folder_abc => places.sqlite

but i agree with recommending mozbackup - use it myself regularly with firefox and thunderbird

[MilesAhead]

It's a shame they changed the bookmark format and broke bookmark sync & sort.
One of the big reasons I'm still on FF 2.x is that addon. It's great if you have your own ftp storage. When you download the bookmarks into FF the formatting is all preserved. You don't have to mess with the personal toolbar or any of that. All bookmarks & bookmark folders and sorting is all set. Download and forget it. It's great. But I think the dude who did it has given up on it.

[Westly32]

westly32,


the firefox bookmark file should be somewhere here:

=> documents & settings => user_xyz => application data => mozilla => firefox => profiles => folder_abc => places.sqlite

but i agree with recommending mozbackup - use it myself regularly with firefox and thunderbird

Thanks...Now this I did manage to locate (I haven't downloaded the locate32 program yet-I've been gone all day). It's listed as a sqlite file rather than HTML file that FF accepts.
Which leads to another silly question, how can I save the sqlite file to HTML? Renaming it to HTML didn't work...

[Abuilder]

Westly32
Just copy your old places.sqlite over to your new install in the same place. In my case it's located in my:

C:\Documents and Settings\abuilder\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\3r6ubgma.default
If you have more than one *.default folder in Firefox\Profiles\ copy the places.sqlite file to the newer *.default folder overwriting any places.sqlite that may exist.
That should be it. Make sure you are not running FF when making these changes though.