Solved importing IE9 recovery pages to get loaded pages back

[chrysalis]

Ok forewarned this is a high level problem.

So I had a problem with IE where it wasnt storing pages in history, I closed all my IE windows, and using ccleaner wiped the history file (I assume was corrupt) and that fixed that problem, but I made a new one, info as follows.

I normally on IE my first IE window has about 15 or so tabs loaded, which I use as reference points, for whatever reason I didnt bookmark these tabs but simply they were always loaded in the firs tIE windows after reboots etc. so basically on reboots I would close this IE windows last, and on the first IE window after reboot I would select "reopen last browsing session" from the menu to recover these tabs understood so far? What I did with ccleaner wiped this session, and those pages had hugely important info to me in them.

I have no system restore point to get it back.

I do have a norton recovery image 10 days old.

Now the new problem.

Norton recovery images are made with the system running, almost certianly I had IE open at the time. So there is no me importing IE files, starting IE and simply selecting "reopen last browsing session" as when norton did its image IE was running. So this leaves what?

The crash recovery data, when IE is running it stores data on whats currently open incase it crashes and so can recover.

In the image I have mounted there is the following folder. (Q drive)

Q:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Recovery

Inside it is various dat files which are in binary format.

What I am trying to do is copy the required files across to the point my local IE thinks its crashed when I start it and as such restores this session and I get my tabs back.

But simply copying these files and starting IE doesnt do a crash recovery, I need to find the flag it sets so IE knows its previously crashed.

If i force crash IE and then copy the backed up recovery folder across then it starts normally without recovery, so its inside the recovery folder, the flag is set. Because if I force crash IE without copying my old recovery fodler across it starts its crash recovery.

Thats all I know so far.

 

[chrysalis]

Ok I have done it, here is how.

IE prepends its recovery files with 'RecoveryStore.'

and each session file is named like this '{9AC84612-1C85-11E3-AF5A-001B213DE643}.dat'
So a recovery file is like this 'RecoveryStore.{7ACE6B97-256F-11E3-96B2-001B213DE643}.dat'

When IE is running it has a registry key matching the name at 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Recovery\Active'
The key is without the prepend and file extension so such as '{7ACE6B97-256F-11E3-96B2-001B213DE643}'

If IE closes down successful the key is deleted from the registry.
If it crashes the key still exists, so on startup IE checks for the key and loads the associated .dat file to recover tabs.

So I have them recovered luckily.

 

[aashomlo]

chrysalis, I need your help. I tried to follow your instructions here and my IE9 doesn't recover the intended tabs. I think my situation is a bit different: I am trying to recover the 'Reopen Last Session' tabs that were wipped out by SpyBot S&D Update installation. (They were not lost due to IE crash.) I have a backup of all the dat files from Last Active folder prior to losing them. Which ones do I need to reactivate 'Reopen Last Session' and regenerate my lost tabs? Do I also need to do anything with the Registry? It would be helpful if you can provide a list of steps to follow.

 

[chrysalis]

Hi, I think reopen last session is different sadly, its possible the files are stored in the same folder, but it wont be using that registry key.