Restore Previous open tabs after Windows Update

Anonymous
2021-03-22T18:16:18+00:00

An unscheduled reboot of Windows 10 to install updates has deleted all of my open tabs in Edge Chromium.  I have no way to restore the previous session, and the "reopen closed tabs" option does not work.  I have solved the problem for future tabs by selecting the "Continue where you left off" options in the "On startup" settings, but that does nothing to help me with the tabs I have already lost.  You'd think there'd be an easy solution to this with as easily as Windows 10 reboots without permission, but I have yet to find one.

Any help for this annoying (and counterintuitive) issue?

[Original Title: Edge Chromium]

Microsoft Edge | Tabs, address bar, and search | Windows 10

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-06-02T07:42:39+00:00

    ... as soon as I opened Edge to point it to the recovery file, the promising looking Tabs files in my Sessions folder were immediately destroyed ...

    I'm so sorry I missed a step in the instructions, precisely to avoid the event you experienced. I'll reproduce them here with the missing bits, in case anyone stumbles over this thread in the future. These instructions are for the Default profile; change the path as appropriate for other profiles, e.g. Profile 1.

    <ol style="margin-left: 40px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)"><li><p>Close down all Edge instances.</p></li><li><p>Copy this path:<br><strong>%localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default</strong></p></li><li><p>Open File Explorer (Winkey + E), paste into the address bar and press <em>Enter</em>.</p></li><li><p>Open the folder called <em>Sessions</em>. Each file in that folder contains details of the current and at least one previous session.</p><ol style="margin-left: 40px"><li><p>If you see a file called <em>Tabs_{long number}</em> whose modified date corresponds to the session you lost, you're in luck. Copy the file to a safe place (e.g. your desktop).  </p></li><li><p>If you don't see any file from the lost session, right-click on the <em>Sessions </em>folder and select <em>Restore previous version</em>. If you see a previous version with a likely-looking date, click <em>Restore > Restore to </em>and choose a folder to restore to, e.g. on your desktop. </p></li></ol></li><li><p>If you found a likely-looking <em>Tabs_... </em>file,</p><ol style="margin-left: 40px"><li><p>Open Edge and navigate to <a href="http://lsauer.net/chrome-session-restore/#.YFnaehCnxEY" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer nofollow">Chrome Session Restore / Recovery of corrupted Session files (lsauer.net)</a></p></li><li><p>Follow the instructions on the page to inject the file you saved at (4) above either by drag-and-drop or by using the <em>Choose files </em>box.</p></li><li><p>The small arrow ⏷ should reveal the tabs from the session concerned. Each entry is a link to the page, so you can open the ones you want in the current Edge session.</p></li></ol><p style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)"></p></li></ol>

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-06-02T00:23:11+00:00

    Ah: you mean, like an opportunity for a fresh start, unburdened by baggage from the past? You may be onto something there!

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-05-31T21:15:33+00:00

    i think this is by design - now when ever the New Edge crashes 2 or 3 times per week, it loses all your open tabs, history and settings. This allows you to start all over from fresh without having to worry about whatever you were doing before.

    Actually putting in a working session manager into Edge like all other browsers have would be too much work and make it even more unstable.

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-05-24T11:07:47+00:00

    An unscheduled reboot of Windows 10 to install updates has deleted all of my open tabs in Edge Chromium. 

    This infuriating behaviour has allegedly been fixed. The release notes for Dev channel update to 92.0.891.1 include this passage:

    • Fixed an issue where tabs sometimes aren’t restored after the browser is forcibly closed by a Windows Update-initiated machine restart.

    While fixes like this are sometimes ported to all channels (Canary, Dev, Beta and Stable), many of them have to go through the testing phases before they reach the Stable version. You may have to wait a few weeks to enjoy it.

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-05-24T07:30:19+00:00

    This was an excellent tip, except that as soon as I opened Edge to point it to the recovery file, the promising looking Tabs files in my Sessions folder were immediately destroyed (overwritten) by the new Edge session.

    I know I should use Collections, but I thought my session would be restored post-update. I often leave several tabs open (opened over a span of days, so History is not much help) as a reminder of work that's in-progress. Sucks when an update wipes them out (and yes, I checked for the tab-block at the top of History / Recently closed).

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