In the Default folder there are 2 bookmark files, bookmarks and bookmarks.bak I tried copying one and then the other, no change. I seem to have some of my older bookmarks but my newer ones are missing.
Also, weird thing is happening with the ads/pop ups, this morning I turned on my laptop, ads and pop ups everywhere, even places like email and youtube I restarted Chrome, no ads and pop ups...everything was clean.
what the heck...one second they're there and the next they're not. I am still getting them.
Let's put things into perspective so you don't get mixed up:
As a
user of Chrome, the browser stores your
data in the
User Data folder. The name of this folder is self explanatory. Your bookmarks are part of the data stored in there, in a file called
Bookmarks inside a subfolder called
Default. Whenever you perform actions regarding bookmarks in Chrome, it reads and writes data to the Bookmarks file and when you close Chrome it creates a backup copy of this file. The backup copy is called
Bookmarks.bak.
If you copy the Bookmarks file from the old user data folder,
User Data.old, to the new user data folder, replacing the existing one, the bookmarks recorded in that file do not appear in Bookmark Manager until you restart Chrome. FIRST close Chrome, copy over the file from the old user data folder into the new one and reopen Chrome. Open Bookmark Manager and your old bookmarks will all be there. Note that only the old bookmarks will be available, i.e those that you had saved before renaming the old user data folder. Any bookmarks that you added AFTER Chrome created the new user folder will not be available because you replaced them ALL with those from the old user folder.
You could have kept both the old and new bookmarks if you hadn't replaced the Bookmarks.bak file as well. You need to follow instructions given here very
keenly and if you aren't sure of what to do, seek further assistance BEFORE you do anything else.
Hint:
Chrome has sync functionality through which you can have your browser data, including bookmarks, linked to your Google account. You just need to sign into Chrome and select which data should be synchronized. By default ALL data will be synchronized. Go to
Settings and the
Sign In option is top on the list, make use of it.
Note:
You will also have to add any extensions from the Web Store that you had added while using the old user data. This means you have to add uBlock Origin or whatever other ad-blocking extension you had added. Again, you need only one ad-blocker. If you're still getting popups and ads despite having an adblocker extension added to Chrome, it's possible there is a similar extension that's conflicting with the adblocker you added, causing it to crash and stop working. Security software such as antivirus and antimalware programs could also be interfering with the adblocker, so tell us what security software you are running. Some antivirus programs install their custom versions of adblock/browser security extensions and these could be interfering with those you add. Such extensions are installed system-wide and are always added even after creating a new user data (profile), unless you disable or remove them.
Let's see a screenshot of Chrome with the popups and ads, and the chrome://extensions page showing the list of extensions and their statuses.
