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Firefox crashes while starting up

  • 5 replies
  • 8 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by HeidiFox

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After having used Firefox for years on my iMac, today it won't even start but immediately crashes. I have tried starting from the safe modus and I have installed the latest software updates. Also I use the lates Mac OS X version. My safety program reports no virus, trojan, worm or spyware. So I ran out of solutions and I hope you can help me.

After having used Firefox for years on my iMac, today it won't even start but immediately crashes. I have tried starting from the safe modus and I have installed the latest software updates. Also I use the lates Mac OS X version. My safety program reports no virus, trojan, worm or spyware. So I ran out of solutions and I hope you can help me.

All Replies (5)

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We're sorry to hear that your Firefox seems to be crashing when you open it. Please perform the following steps to give us a crash report ID that helps us find out more about the cause of the crash.

  1. Open the Finder by clicking the smiley face icon in the dock.
  2. Navigate to the following directory: ~ / Library / Application Support / Firefox / Crash reports / submitted.
  3. Now, you should see a list of files that contain reports. Click the gear icon in the toolbar (or open the View menu), then select Arrange by > Creation date to get the most recent files at the top of the window.
  4. Open the most recent 5 files with a text editor and copy the IDs.
  5. Paste each ID into the reply window on the forums.

Thanks in advance!

You can find more information and troubleshooting steps in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.

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Hi Satdav,

Thanks for your reply. Here are my 5 most recent crash IDs, starting with the latest:

bp-ae1b1600-16ba-4ee1-948f-3eb992121001
bp-9189dc9c-b17e-46a6-82d0-d0f552121001
bp-d0321487-e9bf-4a4a-908a-a0b852121001
bp-60595861-5a4a-4ae8-95b5-f41102121001
bp-dd9a3a78-2388-4ba0-b209-cc7c52121001

I hope these are useful in solving this problem.

Thanks and bye,

HeidiFox

Modified by cor-el

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Looks that is is related to the pop-up blocker.

Do you have any extension that can block pop-ups or do you have a large pop-up block list?

Try to clear the "Site Preferences" via Clear Recent History

Note that clearing "Site Preferences" clears all exceptions for cookies, images, pop-up windows, software installation, and passwords.

You can also try to rename the permissions.sqlite file to permissions.sqlite.sav in the Firefox Profile Folder in case the file is corrupted.

This will remove all exceptions (cookies, images, pop-ups, software). If renaming didn't help then you can undo and rename the permissions.sqlite.sav file to permissions.sqlite to get back the old exceptions.

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Hi Cor-El,

Thanks for your respons. Is there any way I can check that pop-up blocking extension without running Firefox? Since I can't run Firefox anymore I can't go to Preferences. I did try to rename that permissions.sqlite file but it did not help. When I try to startup Firefox after renaming that file, the same crash report appears and in de Firefox profile Folder a new permissions.sqlite file is created immediately, together with a prefs.js file and a minidumps folder. Stange, huh!

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Firefox works again! This morning I tried to re-install Firefox 15.0.1 for a second time and this time the file was bigger than in my first attempt: it was 33Mb instead of 11Mb. Maybe something went wrong during my first attempt. After re-installing Firefox automatically started re-initialising and after this everything works again. Good to be back!