Windows 10 cannot upgrade 2004 and the cumulative update

Ztruker · 01 Nov 2020

Firefox is under Roaming\Mozilla. Don't know about Chrome as I don't use it.

OldNavyGuy · 01 Nov 2020

windows8thumba said:

got windows reinstalled, thank you so much guys! The only thing I lost was the firefox and chrome bookmarks. I thought I had copied my entire user folder over to a thumbdrive under ubuntu, but then after reinstallation I realized that user/AppData is missing the Local folder with all the settings. Bummer!

Tools you might look into -

Macrium Reflect Free - free software for making disk images

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

A 1 TB external USB hard drive to store backups - they are now less than 50 dollars US.

Karen's Replicator - free tool to backup files and folders between disk images

Karen's Replicator the Backup Utility for Windows v3.7.6 Released May 25, 2020 | Karen's Power Tools

Glad to hear you're finally up and running.

windows8thumba · 01 Nov 2020

Thanks so much man! This is the best computer forum ever and I learned a lot!

Matthew Wai · 02 Nov 2020

Chrome bookmarks:

%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks

Ztruker · 02 Nov 2020

Thanks Matthew, looks like a bastardized XML file.

For Firefox it's "%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\places.sqlite"

windows8thumba · 02 Nov 2020

Is there a way to recover the firefox bookmark file after clean reinstall? I did use the ubuntu USB stick to copy/paste my entire User folder over, but for some reason the AppData/roaming folder is missing. Everything else like Desktop and Documents copied over, but not the AppData

Ztruker · 02 Nov 2020

After a Clean Install, no.

Appdata is a hidden folder. Don't know if that matters to Linux, didn't think it did. Did you get any of the Appdata folder?

windows8thumba · 02 Nov 2020

I saw some programs (such as kroll ontrack) that claims it can recover data. Yes there were other stuff in the appdata folder copied, so that's weird.

Matthew Wai · 02 Nov 2020

Data can be recovered as long as they have not been overwritten.

Ztruker · 02 Nov 2020

Matthew Wai said:

Data can be recovered as long as they have not been overwritten.

He did a Clean Install, lots of data written, very unlikely to recover anything using data recovery programs like Recuva.

You can certainly give it a try but it's highly unlikely.

This is why we strongly urge people to do image backups to a 2nd internal hard drive or an external hard drive using Macrium reflect or similar program. This is something you should be doing on a regular basis as part of your normal maintenance.

Ontrack is not free and I doubt if your bookmarks are worth spending several thousand dollars to recover.