Hey guys, I'm trying to find some old websites and blogs I had been to a couple of months to a year ago. I have looked around enough and thought about it and decided to just look through my browsing history. The problem is my browsing history has been deleted a few times and I cannot find a way to get it back.

 Anyone know a way to do it? I am using Mozilla Firefox, I have tried CMD and Index.dat but it doesn't appear to be working for me. Or maybe I just need an easier explanation or program.

 Thanks for the technical help if you can. If there is a better forum for this though can you direct me to it? Thanks.

Well - first question I would ask:  Did you save any as bookmarks?

If so, did you create a firefox account?  If yes to both - you can just relog into your old firefox account and it will redownload all of your bookmarks.

If no to these:

Check your temp folder.  If you're not into regular computer maintenance (which most people fail to do, but really should); you may have certain temp internet files that indicate the websites in question:

(Assuming a windows computer, this is much more complex on MAC): go to a folder and in the browser window change the address to: %temp% or %appdata%

This will take you to that special hidden folder where all sorts of small, crumbly data is stored.

One way to search from here (other than picking through every tiny file in the vain hopes of finding something) is to do a search by: *.jpg, *.png, *.jpeg and so forth for different images.  There is a good chance that your websites will have left small bits of their headers, banners, and so forth to help you remember those sites.

Yes, a bit convoluted and very manual: but way more likely to succeed than hoping for some recovery program to give you your answer.

Thank you, but I tried the appdata method and couldn't find what looked like the URLs. There were URLS for sites I still had in my web browsing history but not deleted ones. I'm looking for the temp files and see what looks like it, ("temp file", and "server files" but it says "find a program on the internet that will open it.").  Got any ideas for solutions? I've looked at youtube video tutorials and they haven't helped.

 I forgot to mention I am using a windows computer running Windows 7.

Web crawlers often go through blog and forum sites if they are public.

Can you remember some specific text that you read or posted when you visited?  If so, use it in a web search and you may find a link back there.

For example, guess what I can find if I search on "Henshin Have you ever wanted to be a hero"

I have but the search doesn't turn up a link. The only ones I see are websites that I don't recognize at all, (I've heard that they might be popups and I'm mostly the only user of this comp). But if I try to find say "Comixology" which I have been too on this computer I cannot. Just whatever is in browsing history currently.

 What is a web crawler and does my computer have one by default? It is a 3 year old Windows Desktop running on Windows 7.

EDIT: Also is there any way I can find out if a website is down without going to it? I just don't want to see the "403 error" like I did for one webcomic I couldn't find again.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:31, Mon 20 Apr 2015.

As I was the one that mentioned a web crawler I feel I need to respond but I am fairly certain that a brief explanation from me would only result in more questions.

I mean no offense by this.  It is admirable that you seam willing to learn and maybe someone else can help.

Okay, thanks anyway.

 Anyone else got any easy ideas for how to do this?

A web crawler is an automated system (program), usually developed by the various search engines (i.e. Google), that examines keywords, phrases and taglines in different websites and stores them.

If you google for just about anything: you will notice there is always a brief 'description' for each website, that usually reflects at least one sentence that is on the website.

So, what CosmicGamer is suggesting: is attempt to dig into your personal memory, and try to remember just one sentence that was on those websites, blogs, forums, etc.  If you can do that: you can usually get your correct search result within the first few pages.

As the search method did not produce any useful results for you, CosmicGamer's suggestion may be the best bet.

I do suggest though finding a way to save your bookmarks, as I said earlier: Firefox can do this automatically by setting up a saved-account with them.

duckduckgo allows you to create a personalized 'bookmarklet' saved data.  Yes, I realize this does not help you much right now, but if you're like a lot of internet users - you probably use more than one device.