444032 - Bookmarks & Personal Toolbar Folder get wiped out each time program is restarted

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[S. Kerman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15

This is probably a repeat of 319196.  It's disappointing to see that this bug was reported on 6/24 but nonetheless my system automatically downloaded the screwed up version and auto-installed it on my system on 7/7, long after that date. My bookmarks and personal toolbar have been wiped out as a result.  

A little more vigilance in the future on the part of whoever is responsible for launching these bombs towards users would be a service to users.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start program
2. Bingo!  No bookmarks
3. Shut down program and copied most recent bookmarks backup file to the D:\Documents and Settings\Me\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ "salt" folder, replacing 1K skeletal file found there.
Actual Results:  
4. Restarted the program - bingo! - no bookmarks and the newly restored file has been reduced from a valid 461K bookmarks file to another empty 1K skeletal shell of its former self.


Expected Results:  
5. What are backup bookmark files for?????

6. Good work, guys!
7. I will now disable automatic checking and downloading of updates on all machines on which FF and TB are installed. Given that once they download they will automatically install when the machine is restarted, this has taught me that if the machine crashes and must be restarted, the automatic installation will deny me the opportunity to back up my profile manually before approving the installation of the update.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

This works fine for me on Windows XP.
Bug 319196 was filed for loss of bookmarks caused by a corrupted localstore.rdf file. They were not really lost but not shown on the toolbar. 
Please try a new profile and copy your bookmarks.html file to the new profile.
Then make a backup copy of your entire profile folder.
See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

no answer resolving incomplete, feel free to reopen if you still see the issue after having tried suggestions from comment 1