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Location and search toolbar don't work. Unable to use FireFox 20.

  • 9 vastust
  • 22 on selline probleem
  • 2 views
  • Viimati vastas kmdani

kmdani
kmdani
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Once FF20 installed, it has basically became worthless. Any website typed in the location bar, or any search typed in the search bar do nothing. You can hit enter or the -> arrow until blue in the face. Anything put in the location bar or the search bar is ignored. Before clearing out all of my history/user data, the drop-down for the location bar would populate, but selecting any of the links in the list would not get FF to open the page. Oddly, bookmarks still work, as do locations in the help menu (I'm typing this in FF20), and pages on the "new tab" page.

There are no search engines displayed in the search box, but there are the XML files in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins" folder. I can go into "Manage Search Engines", but that list is empty, and I am unable to click on the "Get more search engines" link.

I have tried reinstalling several times (including deleting all FF files in my program files and app data), starting in safe mode, and have disabled all add-ons and extensions. I have at least 3 other people at my company having the same problems with FF20.

All of the computers are running Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise in a domain. All of our profiles are using folder-redirection, so our %APPDATA%, which normally points to C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming is pointing to a network share: \\server\userdata$\[user]\AppData\Roaming The problem is not specific to a machine / video card, as we have three different Dell Optiplexes, with different video cards.

This setup worked fine with FF <20.

Thanks!

Once FF20 installed, it has basically became worthless. Any website typed in the location bar, or any search typed in the search bar do nothing. You can hit enter or the -> arrow until blue in the face. Anything put in the location bar or the search bar is ignored. Before clearing out all of my history/user data, the drop-down for the location bar would populate, but selecting any of the links in the list would not get FF to open the page. Oddly, bookmarks still work, as do locations in the help menu (I'm typing this in FF20), and pages on the "new tab" page. There are no search engines displayed in the search box, but there are the XML files in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins" folder. I can go into "Manage Search Engines", but that list is empty, and I am unable to click on the "Get more search engines" link. I have tried reinstalling several times (including deleting all FF files in my program files and app data), starting in safe mode, and have disabled all add-ons and extensions. I have at least 3 other people at my company having the same problems with FF20. All of the computers are running Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise in a domain. All of our profiles are using folder-redirection, so our %APPDATA%, which normally points to C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming is pointing to a network share: \\server\userdata$\[user]\AppData\Roaming The problem is not specific to a machine / video card, as we have three different Dell Optiplexes, with different video cards. This setup worked fine with FF <20. Thanks!

All Replies (9)

Amit Kumar Thakur
Amit Kumar Thakur
  • Locale Leader
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Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:

Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
  3. 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.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

Please report back to see if this helped you!

kmdani
kmdani Küsimuse esitaja
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Thanks for the quick response! As I stated in my question, the full clean and re-install has not worked. I have already followed your directions, and had gone the extra step of scrubbing the registry in case there was a hidden setting somewhere.

Unfortunately, the simple act of reinstalling did not fix my problem.

marxx
marxx
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We have the same problem in our environment with 900 users.

The problem is caused by our profile redirection. Our users connect on Windows XP and Windows 7 workstations to an Active Directory. To have their roaming user profiles working on XP and 7 we use a folder redirection for their profiles to a separate place on our storage.

%APPDATA% is therefor <ip-adress>\redirect-folder$

Here is the Firefox profile located under <username>\Appdata\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Under this location now somehow the search engine entries for Firefox 20 mess up. That is why "Enter" does not work for restricted users.

When we delete the Firefox profile with firefox.exe -p and add a new one with a folder location somewhere on the c:\ drive everything works fine again.

Could you guys at Firefox fix this, please?

Many thanx

marxx

kmdani
kmdani Küsimuse esitaja
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marxx -- I tried your suggestion, and it works for us as well. Moving the profile from the default redirected %APPDATA% folder to C:\Temp (in my case), solved the problem. The location and search boxes now work.

I'd love to have a actual fix, though -- I've got a bunch of guys that are now switched to Chrome, and the longer they're on it, the more they're going to stick with it.

wxfixer
wxfixer
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Our organization would like this to get fixed soon, we are 27 users (mostly restricted users) in a AD environment with roaming profiles.

Amit Kumar Thakur
Amit Kumar Thakur
  • Locale Leader
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Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode, which disables most add-ons.

(If you're not using it, switch to the Default theme.)

  • You can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by holding the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • Or open the Help menu and click on the Restart with Add-ons Disabled... menu item while Firefox is running.

Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode"

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article for that.

To exit the Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help other users who have the same problem.

kmdani
kmdani Küsimuse esitaja
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Safe mode does not work either. The only thing that has worked is to move the profile to the C drive, like marxx suggested.

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
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There's a Bug with Firefox 20 and roaming profiles. The issue has been identified and a fix is being worked on. The question is whether the fix will be in a Firefox 20.0.1 chem-spill release or put off to Firefox 21.

edit - looks like as of this morning a decision was made to do a 20.0.1 chem-spill release next week.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857672

(Please don't comment in that Bug report unless you can provide a patch to fix the problem.) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

Muudetud the-edmeister poolt

kmdani
kmdani Küsimuse esitaja
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Now that 20.0.1 came out, Firefox is working correctly for me again. Thanks everyone!

-Ken