310850 - Bookmarks are lost after installing automatic Mozilla Firefox update

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 284099

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[ramon_sellers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

Periodically Mozilla Firefox will prompt me to update to the latest version
available.  After installing the past two successive automatic updates, I've
discovered that my bookmarks, which were saved in the previous version, were no
longer available.  Note:  I may or may not have been operating Firefox in the
"Safe Mode."

In some cases, this has resulted in me being unable to complete some planned
work.  Please configure future automatic updates to allow bookmarks from
previous versions to be automatically transferred during version updates.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Save any book mark using the bookmark menu
2.  Wait until Firefox prompts you to update to the latest version
3.  Install the recommended update by following onscreen directions
4.  Restart computer
5.  Attempt to open a previously saved bookmark by using the bookmark menu
6.  Viola! All previously saved bookmarks have mysteriously disappeared

Actual Results:  
My bookmarks had vanished, and in some cases, I am unable to reestablish them

Expected Results:  
I expected that I would be able to visit previously viewed websites, which I
bookmarked, by going though the bookmark menu

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Updates aren't supposed to wipe out your bookmarks, they're stored in your
profile, not in the application directory. And there's also a backup of the
bookmark file. Aren't you sure that you're not using a new profile (the old one
is still on disk) ?

You might consider to upgrade to Firefow 1.5 beta 1, which -among other things -
contains bug 305004 - we keep copies of the last 5 days.

Comment 2

[José Jeria]

Please start firefox like this:
firefox.exe -p

You should then get the profile manager, how many profiles do  you see there?

Comment 3

[David Anderson]

this could be related: my friend, a non-technical teacher, had a similar incident:

"after using firefox (mozilla) for a while, it gave me the message that i should update the browser to receive critical updates.  however, now all of my bookmarks are gone!!!"

I had her look in her profile > bookmarks.html and bookmarks.bak... but they had already been updated with her first attempt to (through the browser) restore lost bookmarks

Comment 4

[B Mickler]

This happened to me, too.  Firefox automatically updated to 1.5.0.2 while I stepped away from the computer.  I came back, saw that it had updated and I restarted the browser.

Now, most of my bookmarks are gone.  Any bookmarks that were directly under the 'Bookmarks >' menu are gone but any bookmarks that I had organized into subfolders under the 'Bookmarks >' menu option are still there.

System is WinXP pro.  I looked in the profile folder and there is only one profile:  default.q5u. Let me know if you need more info.

Comment 5

[Attillio]

i just encountered this problem last week with an automatic update... any solutions yet?

Comment 6

[dauntless.ninja]

My bookmarks have dissapeared aswell after an update. How can i restore them?

Comment 7

[angelsolace]

For the third time firefox has automatically updated and I have lost all my bookmark pages, I cant take this anymore. Im loosing too much important work... please say I dont have to use internet explorer. 

There has to be a way to fix this.
Can anyone help?

Comment 8

[Tim]

This has happened to me as well... 3x now I have started Firefox to have not only my bookmarks disappear, but all my bookmark toolbar as well.  

a resolution would be nice.

[e-mail]

Comment 9

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 284099 ***