Firefox crashes on startup
Hi.
I work as an IT consultant for a private college and we use Firefox as our default web browser because some of the educational web portals that we use are optimized for Firefox. We mostly have Macs for our students and teachers, but the administrative division uses PCs for some specific software that requires PCs.
Now on three of the staffs PCs Firefox has stopped working. All three have had updates installed lately which seem to have caused the issue. The last machine it happened on I was personally monitoring the updating process because there was a issue with Java. Some Java settings had to be restored which caused Firefox to download and install an update and after the update was installed, Firefox started crashing on startup.
It's the same for all three computers. Firefox crashes on startup and we can't start the browser in safe mode. There is no BitGuard installed on any of the three computers. All three are running Windows 7 Professional.
We are trying to apply workarounds by using alternative webbrowsers, but in some cases this causes some issues. I have sent some crash reports already explaining the issue.
Please assist as we are somewhat inconvenienced by the problem.
Thanks and best regards. Hrafnkell Hrafnkelsson Campus Kristiania Bergen
All Replies (7)
We're sorry to hear that your Firefox seems to be crashing when you open it. Please perform the following steps to give us a crash report ID that helps us find out more about the cause of the crash.
- Press the following shortcut to get a Run window: [Windows] + [R]. This should bring up a window that contains a text field.
- In that text field, enter %APPDATA% and press Enter. An explorer window should open.
- From that explorer window, double-click on the Mozilla folder, then double-click on Firefox and then on Crash reports. Double-click on submitted.
- Now, you should see a list of files that contain reports. Go to View > Arrange Icons by > Modified to get the most recent files at the top of the window.
- Open the most recent 5 files with a text editor and copy the IDs.
- Paste each ID with bp- into the reply window on the forums.
Thanks in advance!
You can find more information and troubleshooting steps in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.
bp-7c3753e1-8180-44b4-854e-6b5952140916 bp-e73490d8-37a5-42ef-9786-da6972140916 bp-589d02c2-7c61-4560-81f4-c1e9b2140916 bp-d8336dcb-6e69-4958-84dd-b30492140916 bp-4dbe0fd1-2cc1-42d5-816e-456372140916
thanks for reporting with your crash id. this seems to be fairly prolific startup crash at the moment. other affected users have reported that it's solvable through a clean reinstall:
- please try to uninstall firefox from the system control panel.
- then go to the firefox program folder (usually located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox) and delete the remains of the whole firefox program folder manually
- afterwards and try reinstalling the browser with a fresh copy from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/
Probably related to this Bug report. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1063052 FYI only - (Please don't comment in that Bug report unless you can provide a patch to fix the problem.) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
Near the bottom of that page, there is mention made of unpacked files from the omni.ja "file" being in the Program Files folder of Firefox for some users who reported this problem.
My advice is to remove Firefox (either using the uninstaller routine, and then deleting the remaining Program Files folder - or deleting the Program Files folder) and then reinstall Firefox into a clean folder that will automatically be created as part of the installation when the necessary folder is absent.
The fresh installation should pickup and use the existing Profile folder, so user data loss shouldn't occur.
From the "sound" of that discussion, I wouldn't expect a "fix" from Mozilla any time soon. Sounds like they are still looking for the root cause.
Hi.
I'm still having problems.
The reinstallation goes fine, and then Firefox works on the first launch which happens automatically after installation.
But when I close Firefox, the next time I open it a window pops up saying that Windows is configuring Firefox, or that Firefox is configuring itself, or something like that.
At the end of this process, which finishes without any error messages or anything, nothing happens. Firefox doesn't launch and when I try to launch it again the icon on the task bar gets framed for a second before the frame disappears again.
No crash report or anything like that. Then I have to completely uninstall it again and then reinstall it for every time I want to use it. Which is a very complicated way of running the browser.
Follow up on this issue.
When I uninstall Firefox, both the desktop icon and the taskbar icon remain. It seems like a bunch of registry entries linger even after the uninstall process.
Can you please advice me on which registry strings to delete so that I can attempt to get the issue fixed?
Thanks in advance. :)
Ok, I may have figured it out, but I'd like to keep this issue open for a few days just in case.
I'm not sure how this issue has affected the other users at my workplace. But what I've done to seemingly fix the issue on my PC is:
1. Uninstall Firefox.
2. Delete the Mozilla folder(s) from C:\Program Files(x86)\
3. Delete the Mozilla folder(s) from C:\Users\[Username]\Local
4. Delete the Mozilla folder(s) from C:\Users\[Username]\Roaming
5. Delete all Mozilla strings present in the Windows registry.
6. Delete the desktop and taksbar shortcuts.
7. Restarted computer
8. Downloaded Firefox installation file.
9. Ran installation file.
10. Before installation, in options; Unchecked the option to update Firefox automatically.
11. Unchecking the option to update Firefox automatically was reversed(checked) when Firefox launched so I went into the options menu and unchecked it again.(Under Options - Advanced - Updates)
Then when I closed Firefox and tried to repoen it, it worked. I tried applying the automatic update feature again, and it still works, but I'm not sure if that is what caused the problem so I included the steps taken to uncheck that option just in case someone else is having the same problem.
Cheers.
Hrafnkell Hrafnkelsson Campus Kristiania Bergen
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