Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Firefox crashed and I uninstalled and reinstalled and it will not work!

  • 13 replies
  • 5 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by ksr3761

more options

Firefox was crashing while I was doing schoolwork on line. I was getting an Adobe Flash crash. The school said it was Firefox. I went to your help pages and reinstalled the flash player. The problem got worse. I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled and it is rendered useless now. I cannot even type anything into the web browser spaces as it is locked up. I cannot change the settings in the options. I cannot even get to the troubleshooting pages anymore. I have tried to uninstall and reinstall again, and it still does not work. This is the only program on my computer that is having issues. Please help.

Firefox was crashing while I was doing schoolwork on line. I was getting an Adobe Flash crash. The school said it was Firefox. I went to your help pages and reinstalled the flash player. The problem got worse. I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled and it is rendered useless now. I cannot even type anything into the web browser spaces as it is locked up. I cannot change the settings in the options. I cannot even get to the troubleshooting pages anymore. I have tried to uninstall and reinstall again, and it still does not work. This is the only program on my computer that is having issues. Please help.

All Replies (13)

more options

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information. Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

  1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
  2. Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.


Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

more options

The only way I can get Firefox to work is in safemode. And then it only works for a moment and freezes again. I have created a new profile, I have uninstalled and reinstalled, I have reset firefox and I still cannot get it to work properly. I dont know what happened and this web browser (firefox) is the only one my on-line school supports for class exercises and material. School does not work will with internet explorer. Can you help me?

more options

If Firefox was working properly and then started to not work and you've tried creating a new profile, the only thing left really is to check for malware. Please try the suggestions in How do I get rid of malware?

more options

One other thing you could do is see if you can get us some of your latest crash IDs. There are instructions here: Get help fixing this crash

more options

I am sorry to confuse you. The initial problem started when I was reading documents and Adobe Flash kept crashing. I contacted school support and they said it was a firefox issue not a school website issue. So I went to the Firefox help section and figured out how to uninstall and install the lower version of Flash. This made Firefox not work properly more so. SO I tried to fix flash, Uninstalled and reinstalled the newer version. Made Firefox almost unusable. I could not get my favorites to load. It would not let me type addresses in the address bar. So I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled. It has not worked properly since. The only way I can get it to partially work is to open it in safe mode. I have gone to the MS website and ran malware screeners and Microsoft is not comeing up with anything. This issue is not affecting any other software on my computer...just firefox.

Attached was the original crash report I sent to the school. The second doc is the application info right after I reinstalled it, and was in safe mode.

more options

here is the second file

more options

Ah - you can't attach a crash report. I just need the ID (the number). Something like "bp-XXXX..."

more options

Did the attachements come across?

There is no number in the crash It just said Adobe crashed. send crash report and restart firefox.

more options

I still need help. It is important for me to get firefox working properly again. Can you please respond? Do you guys call or share desktops so you can see what I am talking about? This is NOT solved yet.

Thanks Kim

more options

Ok let's recap:

If none of those things has helped (seems like they haven't) then I'd say to work you're way though these general troubleshooting steps one at a time:

We may have missed something by trying to fix a specific issue that we were mistaken about.

more options

Ok another staff member says he thinks this is a hardware acceleration problem (covered in Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems). The specific instructions are:

  1. Start Firefox in safe mode (since that's the only way you've gotten it to start)
  2. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button and then select Options (or Tools menu and then select Options)
  3. Select the Advanced panel and the General tab.
  4. Uncheck Use hardware acceleration when available.
  5. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the File menu and then select Exit
  6. Start Firefox the way you normally do.
more options

You can also check for problems caused by recent Flash updates and try these:

  • disable a possible RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension for Firefox and update the RealPlayer if installed
  • disable protected mode in Flash 11.3 and later
  • disable hardware acceleration in the Flash plugin
more options

All the other suggestions were tried already, the resets, uninstall, reinstall, updates, nothing seemed to work. I even created a new profile and then deleted all the old ones.

I went to the Microsoft site and re-ran system checks AND malware. I ran a full scan for the malware and it found a couple issues with Java. I tried using firefox again and it didnt work...only in safe mode.

I turned off hardware acceleration like you asked. I "appears" to be working ok at the moment in regular mode. I will try this for a little bit and get back to you with results.


Thanks for helping me with this!