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last night i was in firefox when a popup warned me to download an update. i did. now ff will not open. help?
was on line in ff. a popup w/ ff logo asked me to install an urgent update to ff. i did. now ff, on that computer, not this one, will not open. worried the update was not from you. should i remove and reinstall ff, or try to restore windows to a point before i did this?
peter
Valitud lahendus
If you get a pop-up message asking to update Firefox or plugins or scanning for malware then such a message is likely a scam and you should never respond to such an alert to avoid getting infected with malware.
- Only update Firefox via "Help > About" or by downloading and installing Firefox from the Mozilla server and never via a pop-up or link on a web page.
- plugins should only be updated via the plugin itself or by visiting the home page of the plugin.
All Replies (5)
What happens when you click on the Firefox icon? Is there any small green status bar popping in the middle of the screen? Did you turned off the computer before the update was completed?
it brings up a white screen, but nothing populates.
no to a small green status bar.
no, i did not turn off during update.
Run a malware scan on your computer to make sure your computer was not infected.
Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove your Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. This process does not remove your Firefox profile data (such as bookmarks and passwords), since that information is stored in a different location.
To do a clean reinstall of Firefox, please follow these steps: Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.
- Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
- After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu
and click the close button
).
- Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
- Windows:
- C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
- Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
- Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
- Windows:
- Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
- Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
- Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.
More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.
WARNING: Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.
Note: Firefox has an automated background update mechanism which will never prompt you to manually download and execute a file. In addition you can always trigger a search for updates within Firefox yourself - to learn how, see Update Firefox to the latest version.
Please report back to say if this helped you!
Thank you.
Valitud lahendus
If you get a pop-up message asking to update Firefox or plugins or scanning for malware then such a message is likely a scam and you should never respond to such an alert to avoid getting infected with malware.
- Only update Firefox via "Help > About" or by downloading and installing Firefox from the Mozilla server and never via a pop-up or link on a web page.
- plugins should only be updated via the plugin itself or by visiting the home page of the plugin.
pagpc said
it brings up a white screen, but nothing populates. no to a small green status bar. no, i did not turn off during update.
You may want to do some cleaning of your Windows since you ran this fake firefox-patch.js file.
You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
- Microsoft Safety Scanner
- MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
- Anti-Rootkit Utility - TDSSKiller
- AdwCleaner (for more info, see this alternate AdwCleaner download page)
- Hitman Pro
- ESET Online Scanner
Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista if you don't already have one. Windows 8/10 have antivirus protection built-in.
Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.