Forget-Me-Not

April 24, 2009 10:06 AM

Firefox Forget-Me-Not: My browser no longer seems to remember me.

When I launch Firefox 3.0.9 I am no longer automatically logged into the sites I have set to load on open. I usually have 25+ tabs open at a time and have Firefox set to 'Show my windows and tabs from last time'.

When I visit a site, like Metafilter, I am no longer automatically logged in. Instead, when I click the [Login] link, my username and password are already there so I haven't lost my saved passwords, just the automatic passing of that information from one session to another.

Incidentally, my browser crashes fairly regularly, at a rate of 3 crashes in a 2 day period. I figure it is due to the high number of tabs I run with. Yes, it is annoying but as long as the browser remembers me, I have been able to live with it.

The laptop in question is a dual 2ghz 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium with 4g RAM. The browser in question is Firefox 3.0.9 running the following add-ons:
Delicious Bookmarks
Evernote Web Clipper
Forecastfox
Greasemonkey
Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant
RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin
Skype Extension for Firefox

posted by geekyguy to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I have a similar problem. Starting earlier this week (late last week maybe?) metafilter never remembers what I've read. So that it always lists every comment as new. I also had the Metafilter scroll tag, but it's gone now. I've even tried getting rid of it and re-loading it, to no avail. Anybody out there know what's up?
posted by nushustu at 10:11 AM on April 24

Is Firefox Options->Privacy->Allow Cookies enabled? Sorry if this is too obvious, but no site can remember anything about you if it can't save cookies.
posted by fydfyd at 10:33 AM on April 24

I had a similar problem that started all-of-a-sudden-like a month or two ago -- almost overnight, I was never, ever remembered on any site that I would normally be logged in to. After much searching, I finally came across a site that gave a solution similar to this that fixed it, and I haven't had a problem since. [I'm also a many-tabs / random crashes kind of person, fwiw.]

My file path was a little different from the one given [I'm running XP] but it wasn't hard to figure out.
posted by alynnk at 10:38 AM on April 24

I believe this is a Firefox 3.0.9 problem, since I started having it happen this week after auto-updating. I suspect a file permissions snafu, but am not bothered enough to investigate.
posted by rokusan at 11:41 AM on April 24

To elaborate on the fix provided by the link alynnk linked to,

To fix it you need to remove the cookies.sqlite file from the user profile.

* Close Firefox

* Open Windows Explorer - on the top left select Organize / Folder and Search Options / View / Show Hidden Files and Folders

* Navigate to C:\Users\”USERNAME”\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile\”SESSION FOLDER” (this is a random alphanumeric name)

* Delete the file cookies.sqlite

* Start Firefox and it should work fine

It only worked after I went through and re-logged in to my usual sites and then exited normally using File/Exit. Then on reload of Firefox it remembers me.

Cheers.
posted by geekyguy at 11:58 AM on April 24

You might consider running a few less tabs to avoid crashes. Once I start running 15+ tabs, I definitely notice a decrease in both Firefox's performance and the performance of my whole computer. Most of the crashes I've encountered happened when I was running more than 10 tabs, or more than 10 tabs with flash content opening in one of them.

For your logins, RoboForm could be a big help. Firefox does not securely store passwords, FYI.
posted by mtphoto at 1:01 PM on April 24

If you have a lot of tabs open and want a new, perhaps easier way of opening them, try Morning Coffee, a Firefox addon that provides a button you click for it to open up a whole load of preset tabs. You can have different tabs to open on different days as well if need be.
posted by tumples at 2:30 PM on April 24 [1 favorite has favorites]