This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Hierdie gesprek is in die argief. Vra asseblief 'n nuwe vraag as jy hulp nodig het.

lost content

more options

Firefox is my preferred browser, but sometimes after using google chrome (for my gmail) I go back to firefox and it's empty (except for a tiny firefox logo)! I am runnning a reecenty installed windows 10 and have removed and reinstalled firefox but it still occasionally happens. Any ideas?

Firefox is my preferred browser, but sometimes after using google chrome (for my gmail) I go back to firefox and it's empty (except for a tiny firefox logo)! I am runnning a reecenty installed windows 10 and have removed and reinstalled firefox but it still occasionally happens. Any ideas?
Aangehegde skermkiekies

All Replies (5)

more options

Have you waited to see if Firefox comes back?

What it looks like is that your computer runs out of RAM memory (which is no necessarily unexpected on lower RAM systems when running multiple internet browsers at the same time). If that happens, sometimes Windows needs to kind of unload one program to be able to free up memory for the running one. In this case, since you are actively doing stuff in Google Chrome, your computer might be unloading Firefox.

more options

Thanks for the effortless reply. I am running a Predator gaming pc with 16 Gb of RAM so I hardly think lack of RAM is the problem

more options

Regardless of how much RAM that you have, your description and the screenshot leads me to think that Firefox minimized its use of RAM ("unloading" as Wesley mentioned) to allow other applications to "do their thing".

When that happens, click in the Firefox browser window so that it gets "focus" and try using the keyboard command of {Ctrl + F5} to force Firefox to reload the "missing" page from the server where the webpage hosting server.

I am on a 32-bit version of Firefox with Win7 32-bit and only 4 GB of RAM; 32-bit apps barely address 3 GB of RAM, so I run into that daily when I spend too much time at YouTube. {Ctrl + F5} gets Firefox working again once I close the other browser I was using @YouTube.

more options

You've mentioned that it's a gaming PC. Does it have any kind of memory management or optimization programs installed on it? Some of the gaming PCs do and they can be quite aggressive in freeing up memory for main windows, since it's intended to boost performance of games.

more options

There is no memory management running. I reformatted and reloaded win 10 myself and the only optimization program is the iobit suit, but none of that runs automatically. I have tried Ctrl + F5 several times but it refreshes the desktop as I am unable to open firefox fully. It only appears full screen when I hover over the gui in the taskbar