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Clear recent history "This function has been disabled" message?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Firefox Version 37.0.2 When browsing, pictures and other graphics sometimes show very briefly (1-2 seconds), then turn to black. Also happens sporadically on Google search results pages- page all black except for a few lines of text here and there. Restarting computer fixes it for only a few hours. Mozilla support recommends clearing the history as a first step, but when I go to Options/History and click "Clear Recent History", a Java Script Application box appears: "This function has been disabled".

When I try Options/Privacy and click on the "clear your recent history" link, a button with a red X box over it appears. Clicking on or near it causes this icon to blink for a couple of seconds, repeated clicking is usually required to make it go away, and the history does not clear. 

I'd like to restore the clear history function. Anybody know how?

Firefox Version 37.0.2 When browsing, pictures and other graphics sometimes show very briefly (1-2 seconds), then turn to black. Also happens sporadically on Google search results pages- page all black except for a few lines of text here and there. Restarting computer fixes it for only a few hours. Mozilla support recommends clearing the history as a first step, but when I go to Options/History and click "Clear Recent History", a Java Script Application box appears: "This function has been disabled". When I try Options/Privacy and click on the "clear your recent history" link, a button with a red X box over it appears. Clicking on or near it causes this icon to blink for a couple of seconds, repeated clicking is usually required to make it go away, and the history does not clear. I'd like to restore the clear history function. Anybody know how?

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window

Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.


Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also: