In your system details, it says you are posting using Safe Mode. If Safe Mode works correctly, that implies there is a problem in your add-ons or settings. You can use Safe Mode to disable your add-ons and then later revive them individually. You also can reset your other settings. Just be careful not to zap your bookmarks.

You may want to back up your settings first. See the part of Backing up your information on backing up your entire profile folder.

Click the orange Firefox button, go to Web Developer, then Character Encoding.

Change the setting to Western (ISO-8859-1).

If that doesn't work, try one of the other options.

Thanks for your suggestion. I already have the add-ons all disabled. I have not found a setting that makes any difference. I really don't have a clue as to the difference between safe mode and normal mode other than the disabling of add-ons or plugins. Also, I am still trying to figure out why correcting the associations entry for exe files in the registry would suddenly cause Firefox to break. If you have any other ideas I would welcome them because I am all out. I have attached an image showing what the screen look like.

Bill

Xircal, I don't want to appear any dumber than normal but I don't know which orange Firefox button you are referring to. I tried all on my screen and none have an option to take me to the Web developer. If I go to view Character encoding it is set to Unicode (utf-8). Changing it there does not stick. Can you provide me with more detailed info on how to get to the Web developer screen?

Thanks, Bill

> Also, I am still trying to figure out why correcting the associations entry for exe files in the registry would suddenly cause Firefox to break.

What change did you make? Did you follow a particular online guide?

I used a reg file called exefix_vista.reg which I got from forums.techguy.org. Some how I lost the association for exe files and could not start any applications. That fixed my problem but afterwords, Firefox started this silliness.

In response to Xircal, if I goto Tools/Options/Content/ everything is set for English using iso-8859-1 encoding.

Nothing surprising in the fix file; it's pretty similar to my settings in Windows 7.

I think you need to migrate your bookmarks to a new profile. Something is broken in your current profile and I have no idea how to track it down.

Creating a new (blank) profile: Managing profiles.

To move key settings like bookmarks from your damaged profile to the new profile, see: Recovering important data from an old profile.

Unfortunately when I start the profile manager it displays the hex characters and is unreadable. I will try and use Mozcopy to restore my saved profile from before the problem occurred.

In Firefox 4 Safe mode disables extensions and disables hardware acceleration.

Try to disable hardware acceleration.

• Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If that works then try to toggle some of the Boolean gfx prefs on the about:config page to enable or disable some features.
Filter: gfx

Thanks 1681. Turning off hardware acceleration fixed the problem. It appears that 4.0.1 has a few bugs yet since I was not having this problem in prior releases. Interesting that it began to show up after making the registry edits mentioned earlier.