SOLVED: Restore points, Firefox history and extensions all lost

[Tone111]

Hi all,
After doing a defrag and cleanup in safe mode and going back into normal on my W7 SP1 x64 desktop I found my Firefox had "refreshed" itself to a cleanly installed version, with no bookmarks, history (which I normally never delete), and none of the several extensions I'd installed - one of which was Session Manager which I now can't use to restore my previous tabs, along with no history. Also any of the commonly used url's I type in which used to pop up now don't show as recognised and have to be typed in in full.

I haven't cleaned anything up to cause this (that I know of), and unfortunately I don't appear to have any restore points present now either so I can't revert that way, and there were at least a couple last time I looked  I don't know if these issues are related but I suspect they might be  - I have tried to create a restore point to see if it's working, and even though it's turned on it failed to create one - does anyone have any ideas on either restoring my browser features etc or the restore point issue??
Thanks

[Boggin]

While it's known that a 3rd party defrag program can wipe out any created restore points, I've never heard of one preventing new ones from being created - or affecting a browser.

What did you use to defrag ?

Check Event Viewer for any related VSS errors as well as checking to see that Volume Shadow Copy can be started in services.msc by clicking on it then on Start in the upper left pane.

Run a command prompt as an admin and see what a sfc /scannow has to report.

If it reports it is unable to repair some files then download and run SFCFix.exe which will give a more concise report and may even fix the files that sfc was unable to.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/sfcfix.html

[Tone111]

Thanks for the reply Boggin.

Well I went a bit mad and used several defraggers to compare as my system was grinding a bit, and they all seem to show different levels of defragmentation, and some show % to defrag even after being defragged by others, so I'm not sure which is the best or most accurate way to optimally defrag a HD and haven't had chance to look into it yet.

The ones I remember using were Sysinternals Power Defragmanter, IOBit Smart Defrag, Glary Utilities defrag and Wise 365 defrag. I may have used a couple of others, Auslogics, WinUtilities and another, just to check levels rather than actually defragging. I did it all in safe mode with no network to speed things up as there's much less running and placing demand on the CPU, would that have made a difference?

I wasn't aware that defragging could remove restore points or I might have been more careful, but the levels were significant and the disk did seem like it needed it and is running a bit smoother now, so is there any way of protecting against this? Would a reg backup do the trick in the absence of a restore point? I do have several of these but aren't sure what this will affect...

Is the browser issue related then, and is there any way to find or restore my bookmarks, history, session, extensions, tabs, url's etc? I've never used the sync option or set up an account, so everything will be under the Default profile I'm guessing, I'm hoping it's recoverable... 

I'm at work all day so won't get chance to check the VSS or do an SFC/ FCFix until this evening so will update after that...

[Boggin]

I only ever use Windows own defrag and that of a couple I've tried is the only one to achieve 0% fragmentation.

Not sure what the registry backups will give you back, but you could give them a try.

[Tone111]

Ok, I don't tend to use Windows defrag utility, as good as it is, as it takes seemingly forever to run!  Hence the use of various 3rd party defraggers. Looking into it though it does seem as though losing restore points is a fairly common occurrence after defragging, even with the Windows one  and I have lost loads along the way, just never realised in my ignorance that it was tied to defragging the HD.

Anyways I'll try the other stuff later on this eve...

Don't know if there's a glitch with the site Boggin but I received 3 email notifications within 1 minute after your last reply! 

[Boggin]

I've only received the one for your post.

I've never lost any restore points using Windows own.

[Tone111]

So have I for that one, must have been a temporary hiccup... 

[Tone111]

Ok Boggin, time for an update

Had another go at the system restore and this time it completed with no errors so no idea what the issue was there  so I now have one!! 

Ran an SFC after deleting the pending.xml file and it ran ok but found errors it was unable to fix (as usual) so ran the SFCFix which found the following
AutoAnalysis::
CORRUPT: C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-i..e-trigramdictionary_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_12d6b2e3587e9b12\PINTLGT.IMD


SUMMARY: Some corruptions could not be fixed automatically. Seek advice from helper or sysnative.com.
   CBS & SFC total detected corruption count:     1
   CBS & SFC total unimportant corruption count:  0
   CBS & SFC total fixed corruption count:        0
   SURT total detected corruption count:          68
   SURT total unimportant corruption count:       0
   SURT total fixed corruption count:             0
AutoAnalysis:: directive completed successfully.

This has been an issue for a while now and I guess needs the input of someone on the sysnative forums, but doesn't seem to be causing any problems with the OS or anything noticeable as yet...

Also managed to (partially) resolve the browser issue as well - after some googling and (Windows) exploring I discovered that a new profile folder had been created yesterday - don't know why! - but wouldn't let me delete it due to an "extensions" folder which I also couldn't take control of with permissions, so I copied all (except the extensions folder) of the old profile contents into the new one and now I have my bookmarks and history back - big yays for that!  only downside is my extensions have all gone and for some reason it won't let me re-install any of them  so I'll have to do more digging on that score... 

[Boggin]

I can't find anything specific on that sfc error, but you seem to be getting somewhere.

While you haven't gotten the error in this article, perhaps that change of profile may have also altered your Firefox one and perhaps this article may help.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible

[Tone111]

Yes, cheers mate, everything seems pretty much back to 'normal' now! 

After restarting Firefox to no avail, and then rebooting my machine, I finally got all the extensions to install again, so that's good. That link was useful too - I could have reset the Firefox profile in the .ini file and pointed it back to the original one had I known, but what I've done has given the same desired outcome and effect anyway, albeit via a slightly round the houses route. 

I've lived with that unusual SFC error since after my repair install last year, so it's no biggie, I may get it sorted at some point with the sysnative folks but it doesn't seem to cause any problems that I can gather. 

I'm still not sure if the defragging was the cause of both the problems, but it definitely seems to have removed the restore points, so I may have to look into different methods of doing that, perhaps with Windows utility or some other more secure way.

I think we can say this one's solved now though, so I'll amend the subject to that, and thanks again for your help, appreciated 

[Boggin]

Sorting the profiles out seems to have played a big part, but as to that new profile being created - perhaps a scan with a robust antimalware scanner may be prudent.

Infections can also take out restore points but in your case it may well have been because of the numerous programs you have used.

I don't primarily rely on restore points and create an external system image each month after the various updates.

The only chew I have with that is if it's two or three weeks after that I need to restore, is that I usually have a hell of a job getting Norton Security back up to date, but that's a small inconvenience to having a working system back again.

[Tone111]

Nope, no worries on the malware front - several scans all came up clear, including Avast, MBAM, SAS, AdwCleaner, RogueKiller & TDSSKiller, so all good on that front.

I do need to create system images more often though, my last one is well out of date now so that's definitely on my to do list! Thanks again...

[Boggin]

It's definitely a habit that you should get into.

[makinero]

Boggin -
This version is old. I suggest visit the site of the Author and download the newer version SFCFix.