How to restore Firefox bookmarks from system recovery backup files?

My Windows 7 HP PC crashed because I deleted Ubuntu partitions during dual boot. I used HP System Recovery to back up all my data which is ~26GB to a USB HDD. After a factory reset with default Windows 7 install, it was up running. I then restored the .wim backup files successfully without including Pictures though due to a size concern.

When I tried to restore and import the Firefox bookmarks, I only found a Firefox HTML document "bookmarks" in folder C:\System Recovery Files\2019-02-23 144237\D-OS\Users\uname\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\rjwqog1f.default. I tried to open it and it said "Unsupported file type", see attached. I also tried to use "Import Bookmarks from HTML" and only got one unrelated bookmark "Get Bookmark Add-ons". I searched around the folder "System Recovery Files" for keywords: Mozilla, Firefox and bookmark and there were no apparent hits. Can someone show me how to restore Firefox bookmarks from HP backup files?

Firefox if you have it turned on will sync all settings and bookmarks on its own

Paul,

Can you elaborate on "Can you not copy the backup file from the .default folder to the desktop and use that to import the bookmarks?"? I followed the Mozilla support page to import the bookmarks from backup. One can either "choose file" or "Import Bookmarks from HTML" and neither worked for me. Which .default folder do you mean? My backup files are all in .wim format and C:\System Recovery Files\2019-02-23 144237 is the resultant folder from running RecoveryMgr.exe.

Paul,
I don't see install.wim as one of the backup files. What I have is [0-128].wim (129 wim files) and RecoveryMgr (exe and config) as seen in this HP support page. As I indicated before that when I ran Recovery Manager, I was given a choice of including Pictures type or not, see attached. If I tried without Pictures, the restore was successful and there were no .PNG or JPG files (9 GB, 84 files). The recovery folder C:\System Recovery Files\2019-02-23 144237\D-OS\Users\uname\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles only had some Text files, no "bookmarks". If I tried with Pictures clicked, the process would fail, see attached (tried second time, still failed). However, I have some .PNG files recovered (26 GB and 144 files) and the folder C:\System Recovery Files\2019-02-25 180835\D-OS\Users\uname\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\rjwqog1f.default contained a Firefox HTML file "bookmarks", see attached which was saved in .txt for upload. You can drag this file to Firefox and it is nothing but a bookmark template and add-ons. So I suspect that if the process with Pictures included were successful, I should have a valid bookmark file and Firefox import would be successful. So this might be an HP system recovery issue.

Normally, when we export bookmarks from Firefox, it is in JSON format. But the HP yields an HTML file for which I tried on both Firefox and IE and both worked though. When I looked at a valid JSON or HTML bookmarks file, it had something like "ICON="data:image/png;base64,**a bunch of codes**". Does this further prove that without Pictures complete successfully, Firefox import would not work?


Snick,
Using %AppData% rendered the same path as what I searched with "bookmaks" and the like. When you said "copy and paste", did you mean "export and import"?

Snick,


I am aware of the Firefox Restore menu which allows either automatic dated backup files or manual Choose file. Now I understand your "copy and paste" means Choose file from the Profile folder, in my case, C:\Users\uname\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\e3lyugj8.default. But in it, I only see those dated backup files (in .jsonlz4 extension) in the sub-folder bookmarkbackups.



To really use Choose file, we have to open the "Import and Backup" drop-down menu and select "Backup", to create a current bookmark file, e.g. bookmarks-2019-02-27.json and choose from that to Restore.


All those are sunny day scenarios. My problem is, as I detailed previously, my HP PC crashed and I was only left with the HP System Recovery Manager to work on and yet it didn't yield an expected bookmarks file.