As the title says, CCleaner destroys the bookmarks of my Firefox profile! And I'm explicitly not talking about bookmark backups. I'm talking about the actual bookmarks. If you start Firefox after CCleaner has been run, then all your bookmarks are gone, not just the backups! And, because all bookmark backups have been removed too, you can't even restore your bookmarks! This has happened to me several times now. The first time I had to go back to an old backup I still had on my USB HDD, which means that I lost all my bookmarks from the past months... ?
(Now that I know about the problem, I make a fresh backup on separate drive before running CCleaner, but that can't be the solution).
Yours sincerely.
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System info: Windows 11, CCleaner v6.0.9727, Firefox Developer Edition v102
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CCleaner has never touched my Firefox bookmarks.
However I do note that you say you are using a Firefox beta version - Developer Edition v102.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/102#other
Being a beta version it may still contain bugs, or may contain changes that CCleaner has not been updated for yet - Firefox v102 is not due for full release until 28th June.
Was the first time this happened after you had updated to the Firefox v102 beta?
Has something been changed between v101 and v102 about how/where Firefox stores it's bookmarks?
Current bookmarks are normally in 'places.sqlite' which ccleaner doesn't touch, but if Mozilla have changed that in Firefox v102 then they may have put them somewhere that CCleaner does normally clean.
They did something similar with cookies a few months ago when they switched to 'cookie-jars'.
In fact I'm using the latest official release of Firefox Developer Edition:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/
This is a different product from Firefox "Beta" or "Nightly" builds.
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Was the first time this happened after you had updated to the Firefox v102 beta?
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Nope, it has happened to me several times now.
First time it happened was quite some time ago. Can't remember which exact version of Firefox it was back then, but probably pre 100.
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Has something been changed between v101 and v102 about how/where Firefox stores it's bookmarks?
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Sorry, that is beyond my knowledge.
That's odd then unless the Developer Edition somehow stores bookmarks differently to the standard edition, and I can't see why it would do that.
As far as I am aware the new 'Bookmarks Backup' cleaning section in CCleaner simply clears out the sub-directory %Userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile-ID}\bookmarkbackups\
It doesn't remove the current bookmarks from %Userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile-ID}\places.sqlite DB file.
As you can imagine if CCleaner was removing everyone's bookmarks from Firefox then there would be a lot of shouting about it on here - me at the front.
I know that we have users who use ESR and Nightly, and they're not shouting either.
So it's odd that this seems to be happening to you, a few questions that might help figure out why:
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Is this happening everytime that you run CCleaner, or is it intermittent?
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Do you have any 'Includes' set?
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Are you using any add-on for CCleaner, such as winapp2.ini?
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Are CCleaner and Firefox installed at the standard locations on C:\ ?
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Are you using any other cleaning app?
Other thoughts:
I'm aware that Developer sets up a different user profile, so that you can have both Standard and Developer installed at the same time, but I don't <em>think</em> doing that would make any difference.There would just be 2 Firefox profiles to clean.
I'm not sure just how the Firefox Developer version works, but is there possibly an option in Developer itself that will clear bookmarks on closing?
I can see such an option being useful when doing certain development work.
So what happens if you close and reopen Firefox Developer without running CCleaner?
12 hours ago, nukecad said:
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Is this happening <em>every</em>time that you run CCleaner, or is it intermittent?
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Not everytime.
I tired cleaning again today, after making a fresh backup of my bookmarks on a separate drive, and it did not destroy the bookmarks this time.
Maybe it only happens if Firefox has already created a certain number of bookmark backups already?
(since I had cleaned recently, and Firefox only creates new backups by itself every now and then, there probably weren't any backups to be cleaned this time)
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Do you have any 'Includes' set?
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Nope.
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Are you using any add-on for CCleaner, such as winapp2.ini?
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Nope.
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Are CCleaner and Firefox installed at the standard locations on C:\ ?
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Yes.
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Are you using any other cleaning app?
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Nope.
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I'm not sure just how the Firefox Developer version works, but is there possibly an option in Developer itself that will clear bookmarks on closing?
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I'm using Firefox Developer Edition as my primary web-browser for years now. Never in all that time did it "lose" its bookmarks by itself.
This is realy odd, especially with it being intermittent.
Can you check that both of these exist and that the folder is empty:
%Userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles{profile-ID}\bookmarkbackups\
%Userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles{profile-ID}\places.sqlite
(If Firefox is open there should also be places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal as well).
I'm still wondering if the Developer edition is saving the current bookmarks in a different place than the Standard edition does.
The fact that this only started happening to you recently would seem to suggest that it's tied in with clearing of 'Bookmark Backups' being added to Custom Clean - but there is obviously something more than that going on, or as I said everyone wth Standard Firefox would also be shouting about losing their bookmarks.
The difference does seem to be that you are using the Developer edition, but just why that should make a difference I don't know.
PS. I don't think that the Firefox Developer edition is available on the Microsoft Store, but just to cover the bases you do get it direct from Mozilla?
In the meantime I'll shout this thread for staff attention to make them aware that there may be a possible issue.