Cyberlink: opinions?

[Kulindahr]

You have the basic concept down correct, absolutely, of what's possible, although the steps are slightly more subtle. Brush up on Firefox and its profile manager here and see this page, where you're going to use the "Restoring to a Different Location" section near the bottom. I might recommend you "Create a New Profile" (same or different name as your old one, though same will make it easier). It'll be quite empty. Then, locate the files from your old machine, where its profile was, and move them into your newly created profile. The good thing is if you make a mistake, just start again as the new profile is created for the purpose of restoring the old.

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I finally got the (quiet, calm, uninterrupted) time to tackle the Firefox profile issue, and it worked! I've got back all my old bookmarks, toolbar included!

A big "

"!

One other thing I'll recommend for you. There's a great episode of the twit.tv podcast network's "Know How" about "How To Make Your Windows 8 Act Like Windows 7". Add-ons that emulate Windows 7 with its start menu and more familiar computing experience points are the most popular downloads for Windows 8. It's debated hotly whether one should be doing this to Windows 8 or learn to adapt to it, but you might want to install one of these tools and things might feel less alienating for you. This episode, from February of this year, has some fun banter and they look at some of the leading tools out there, including some fun if they install multiple ones at once - if nothing else, an entertaining watch and it might give you some ideas or show you're not alone in the Windows 8 frustration:




Remember; enjoy the journey as much as the destination!

I've got Start8 installed and haven't had any problems. I even turned the charms (I think they're called) on the right-hand edge back on!

What that video mainly made me think of is how Windows 8 just makes it harder to do just about everything I want to do. The only tabs or whatever on the Win8 screen that I have any use for are things I used to do on the desktop, in separate windows, but now they take extra clicks to reach and won't let me do anything else at the same time. The games are garbage -- best example ever of violating "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" -- because they take forever to load, have all kinds of frills that don't contribute a thing to the game, and if I leave one running and go do something else they slow stuff down. I used to JUB, watch a video, check the news, and play Spider Solitaire all at once, but Win8 makes that hard... so I got Start8 and went back to the old, efficient way.

 

[Kulindahr]

I missed a detail: my subfolders in the Firefox bookmarks folder aren't there. This is a Bad Thing, as I had great amounts of research info organized that way!

Ideas?

 

[trinket]

I missed a detail: my subfolders in the Firefox bookmarks folder aren't there. This is a Bad Thing, as I had great amounts of research info organized that way!

Ideas?

Unusual that they wouldn't be there if you got your profile back; doesn't make sense!

I would first browse your Library (Bookmarks menu --> Show All Bookmarks, not just the View --> Sidebar --> Bookmarks method) to see if they've been re-sorted or otherwise "hiding" amongst your bookmarks, or in a different section.

If not, presumably you still have your original profile folder kicking around on your hard drive that you performed the above restoration process with success from. Look for the:

Places.sqlite file

...within the old profile folder. It should contain your bookmarks and other settings.

One method is you can just copy it to your current Firefox profile folder, the one you're using now (do this when Firefox is closed). However, I might recommend instead you use the Firefox Profile Manager to create a dummy test profile that you can experiment with, without impacting the one you're using now. Call it "test" or something. Once you see that it sets up its own profile folder location on your drive, copy that places.sqlite (or, heck, the entire old profile folder from your old machine) into it and launch Firefox under that profile. You can see if you get your bookmark sub-folders back. If you do, copy that file to your main, "good" profile. If you've saved bookmarks since the time of your old computer's profile folder, you would lose them. You could try to "Export" first, then "Import" again (or edit the HTML) to add them back.

If this import of that file or old profile still doesn't get you your sub-folders, as a second resort you can look at the "bookmarkbackups" folder. This should be inside your profile folder. Whether old profile or new one, if you had the sub-folders at some point, you can utilize this. See the last item at this page for info about that.

 

[Kulindahr]

Unusual that they wouldn't be there if you got your profile back; doesn't make sense!

I would first browse your Library (Bookmarks menu --> Show All Bookmarks, not just the View --> Sidebar --> Bookmarks method) to see if they've been re-sorted or otherwise "hiding" amongst your bookmarks, or in a different section.

If not, presumably you still have your original profile folder kicking around on your hard drive that you performed the above restoration process with success from. Look for the:

Places.sqlite file

...within the old profile folder. It should contain your bookmarks and other settings.

One method is you can just copy it to your current Firefox profile folder, the one you're using now (do this when Firefox is closed). However, I might recommend instead you use the Firefox Profile Manager to create a dummy test profile that you can experiment with, without impacting the one you're using now. Call it "test" or something. Once you see that it sets up its own profile folder location on your drive, copy that places.sqlite (or, heck, the entire old profile folder from your old machine) into it and launch Firefox under that profile. You can see if you get your bookmark sub-folders back. If you do, copy that file to your main, "good" profile. If you've saved bookmarks since the time of your old computer's profile folder, you would lose them. You could try to "Export" first, then "Import" again (or edit the HTML) to add them back.

If this import of that file or old profile still doesn't get you your sub-folders, as a second resort you can look at the "bookmarkbackups" folder. This should be inside your profile folder. Whether old profile or new one, if you had the sub-folders at some point, you can utilize this. See the last item at this page for info about that.

Copying that file into my current Firefox folder was the procedure I used. I'll have to try copying the whole old profile, I guess.