How to Recover Chrome Bookmarks from Windows.old or Old Profile

If you custom install Windows 10/11 using the Windows ISO, your files will be archived to Windows.old. Some users wonder how to retrieve Chrome bookmarks from the Windows.old folder.

If you had enabled syncing, the bookmarks would be back when you sign in to that account using Chrome. However, if syncing wasn’t enabled, this article tells you how to recover the bookmarks from the Windows.old directory.

Recover Chrome Bookmarks from Windows.old

During the custom installation, your files will be to C:\Windows.old. The Chrome bookmarks which you want to retrieve should be located under a subfolder in this path:

C:\Windows.old\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\

1. Open the above folder and double-click the appropriate profile folder — e.g., “Default“, “Profile 2“, “Profile 3“, etc., if you were using multiple Chrome profiles. In the profile folder, you’ll find the file named “Bookmarks” or “Bookmarks.bak“, which has your Chrome bookmarks.
2. Now, open Chrome and type chrome://version/ in the address bar.

   Note the profile path and open the folder in Explorer. For example, it could be “C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\“

3. Close all Chrome windows.
4. Copy the Bookmarks file from the Windows.old location to your Chrome profile folder. Overwrite the existing “Bookmarks” file in the destination folder when prompted.
5. Launch Chrome. Your bookmarks should have been restored!

Chrome Bookmarks Recovery Tool
https://rongjiecomputer.github.io/chrome/bookmark-recovery/#windows

That’s it. You can adapt the above steps for similar situations — e.g., to retrieve bookmarks from the old user profile after user profile corruption or transfer Bookmarks from another device.