Firefox will not open.
Firefox 3.x would not start - period. So I downloaded and installed 4.0. The only thing that I get is the Crash Reporter. I cannot start in safe mode because I can't even get an instance of Firefox. I tried the on-line help suggestion to add a profile, but the profile manager crashes and burns, too.
All Replies (4)
Both being unable to start in safe mode, and being unable to use profile manager are unusual, and indicate a serious problem. Trying to upgrade because of a crash may not have been the best idea.
First of all find your folder containing your profile (and that of any other users on the system) copy the whole lot of it somewhere safe. I am suggesting this because it contains any bookmarked passwords and many other settings of firefox, you will probably at least want to salvage bookmarks and passwords from this later, and there is a possibility that some of the profile could already be corrupt.
Personally if I was in that situation I would be inclined to do a clean install and sort things out later, but having no idea of what is causing the current crash I do not know whether the root cause of the crash or failure of firefox will still exist so you should try to investigate it.
It could be that firefox will not start because it has not actually closed properly, it may even still be running !
The main article to look at is
Also have a look at
The first step is therfore to find out what is happening, is firefox crashing, or is it hanging. Note when reading articles with IE8 you can select the version of firefox and OS by clicking the buttons with a + under "Help with:"
If it is really crashing on startup you may be able to get a crash signature that someone may be able to figure out a cause from.
Well, I can tell you that it ain't still running. Not only does it not show up in the task manager, but I re-booted the PC several times. I probably should have saved the folders beforehand. I actually looked for the bookmarks but couldn't find them in any of the folders, but I had an old set saved off. I don't usually let Firefox remember my passwords.
So I guess I'll go for the uninstall/install next weekend as this is only a weekend-access PC.
That is, unless you or someone else comes up with a cogent alternative.
Thanks.
The uninstall and re-install may not actually work, if it is crashing on startup; it could for instance be due to malware and a re-install would not necessarily remove the cause of the problem.
You probably still have multiple copies of information about bookmarks, namely the bookmarksbackup folder and the places.sqlite file both of those are worth finding copying and saving before any re-install is done.
If it is genuinely crashing on startup finding the crash signature will probably help in determining why it crashes.
You should always delete the Firefox program folder ("C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\") to do a clean reinstall if you decide to reinstall because of problems.
Do a clean (re-)install:
- Download a fresh Firefox copy and save the file to the desktop.
- Firefox 4.0: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all.html
- Firefox 3.6.x: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html
- Uninstall your current Firefox version and remove the Firefox program folder before installing that copy of the Firefox installer.
- Don't remove personal data if you uninstall the current version.
- It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.