I’ll try to keep to the point - I have a tendence to ramble. I ran CCleanner for the first time in a long time earlier today (installed & ran version 7.3.1120.0).
Current and relevant information;
CCleaner was ran with standard settings. I was asked to close Firefox and Discord, but chose the option to continue without closing (I can’t remember if it said that it would skip them completely, or if it would still attempt a partial clean). I think I also remember reading a pop-up about a failure to clear cache files, but I clicked it away immediately because I assumed it was shown as an effect of having pressed that skip button.
All passwords and history remain untouched in Firefox, and my cookies seem to be intact (I’m still logged in everywhere I expect to be).
However, unwanted behaviours have appeared. I’ve tried restarting Firefox, but have not managed to fix the issues on my own.
Firefox no longer autofills in the URL bar (for example; typing in “face” does not automatically complete to “facebook . com” so that I can just type in “face” and hit Enter to visit Facebook. The desired sites DO still show up as suggestions to be picked from the list below the URL bar, but they have to be navigated to, which is not how it was before running CCleaner).
I have tried various fixes in the standard Firefox settings and in about:config, but none have returned the URL bar to my desired behaviour.
New browsing history is no longer being saved, despite the fact that I have not changed any settings in Firefox on my own (I have checked, and Firefox settings say that history should be being saved).
Apologies if there have been questions or fixes posted about similar issues, but I could not find anything helpful to me after a brief search.
If there is no history then the "autofill’ of url has nothing to work with.
So I’d expect that once you get the history back then the autofill will work again.
Have you somehow swirched FFx into Private mode?
From your description though it sound like the ‘places.sql’ database may have become corrupted.
To how to fix it (and some other suggestions) click this link and follow the suggestions given in the AI Overview “Show more”:
I was not in Private mode, and, as I stated, my browsing history was still intact, and the URL bar was correctly pulling up entries from said history…
But after going into about:support and verifying the integrity of the Places Database, there were several errors.
I used the same screen to open up the folder where the profile data was locally saved, and deleted the files suggested in many solutions online;
favicons.sqlite
favicons.sqlite-shm
favicons.sqlite-wal
places.sqlite
places.sqlite-shm
places.sqlite-wwal
This deleted my browsing history, which I really had wanted to keep, but I forsee future headaches if I try to forcibly keep it somehow, so I gave up on it. Is the corruption of browser profiles a rare consequence of running CCleaner?
Anyhow, since I deleted those files, history is being saved again - now to see if I can fix the URL bar issue…
As I said above I’d expect the ur barl to be OK. but it will need time to get back like before as you refill the new places db.
Browser caches and db’s do often get corrupted.
That’s why there are so many answers about it to that google search.
It’s not usually caused by CCleaner, or any other cleaner.
However if it’s already corrupted then running a cleaner may help it show up.
eg. By the cleaner complaining about the cache/db, or by the browser starting to behave differently after cleaning because it couldn’t be “fully” cleaned and files get out of sync.
No, this is not a rare occurrence. If you search this CCleaner for Windows board for “Firefox bookmarks” you’ll find several topics from users who had their bookmark and/or other Firefox Profile files (e.g., places.sqlite, favicons.sqlite, etc.) corrupted after upgrading to CCleaner v7.x. For example, see:
I would strongly advise you stop using CCleaner to clean you Firefox browser, and just use your Firefox settings at Privacy & Security | History to automatically clear your browsing history each time you exit Firefox - see the Mozilla support article Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox.
Even better, follow nukecad’s 11-Oct-2025 instructions at How to Roll Back from v7 to v6.39 to downgrade to CCleaner v6.39 and start looking for another disk cleaner to permanently replace CCleaner v7.x - see the discussion in Hmm888’s 30-Dec-2025 How much longer should we stay with version 6.39.
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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.6691 * Firefox v146.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.25110.6-1.1.25110.1 * Malwarebytes Standard v5.4.6.227-147.0.5453 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.39.11548 * HDCleaner Portable 64-Bit v2.095