Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How do you do a fresh installation on a PC that had FF 33.1.1 crash and you cannot get FF to work or start fresh ??

  • 9 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by FredMcD

more options

Since the FF update 33.1.1 that has caused so much grief to thousands of FF users; all the fixes didn't work and resulted in not being able to resolve the issues caused. I have used FF since its beginning and out of shear frustration have gone to Chrome regretfully. I had sent in dozens of crash reports w/ details to no avail.

So, 35.0 is out and that install failed too. FF won't start but runs using an enormous amount of memory. I have spent hours reading the FF site blogs/community workarounds and like many users it fixed nothing. Scanned my whole system. The amount of time I used up is significant. 33.1 worked fine like all the versions before it.

Pls help me fix this issue, I want to come home to FF but I cannot spend large amounts of time w/o your help. You created the mess so help us out her fix it. I am out of ideas. You can contact me for 1 on 1 email at my registered account. Thank You........ You have plenty of crash reports to work with from me.

Since the FF update 33.1.1 that has caused so much grief to thousands of FF users; all the fixes didn't work and resulted in not being able to resolve the issues caused. I have used FF since its beginning and out of shear frustration have gone to Chrome regretfully. I had sent in dozens of crash reports w/ details to no avail. So, 35.0 is out and that install failed too. FF won't start but runs using an enormous amount of memory. I have spent hours reading the FF site blogs/community workarounds and like many users it fixed nothing. Scanned my whole system. The amount of time I used up is significant. 33.1 worked fine like all the versions before it. Pls help me fix this issue, I want to come home to FF but I cannot spend large amounts of time w/o your help. You created the mess so help us out her fix it. I am out of ideas. You can contact me for 1 on 1 email at my registered account. Thank You........ You have plenty of crash reports to work with from me.

All Replies (9)

more options

Hello,

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 mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu New Fx Menu and click the close button Close 29).
  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.

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.

Please report back to say if this helped you!

Thank you.

more options

If you have submitted crash reports then please post the IDs of one or more recent crash reports that have a "bp-" prefix:

  • bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

You can find the Report ID of recent crash reports on the "Help > Troubleshooting Information" page (about:support).

  • Click the "All Crash Reports" button on this page to open the about:crashes page and see all crash reports.

If necessary then you can open about: pages via the location/address bar.

See:


You can try to disable OMTC and leave hardware acceleration in Firefox enabled.

  • about:config page: layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled = false

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.

more options

To clarify about cor-el's suggestions:

The FF browser does not open, it merely starts in the background and consumes a large amount of memory trying to start and fails. Then the gray box pops up stating its a crash report and I entered pertinent comments at that time then hit send and it went to mozilla and the box closed.

So far, I have never been able to access FF. I accessed Task Manager observing what processes were active/working and FF was there. I killed it after a period of time to start up more than 15-20 mins. That is when the crash report box appears, etc.

I have tried deleting the whole mozilla folder etc. as outlined. Rebooted the PC / Windows OS Win 7 Pro and also powered down for a while and started up. It changed nothing in doing a new installation multiple times.

Thank you for your input and suggestions. This problem I saw affected many FF users in the same way when reading the community postings when version 33.1.1 came out.

more options

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift (Mac Options) > key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

While still in safe mode;

In the address bar, type about:crashes<enter>. Note: If any reports do not have BP in front of the numbers, click it and select Submit.

Using your mouse, mark the most resent 7 - 10 crash reports, and copy them. Now go to the reply box below and paste them in.


If you can't get Firefox to open, you will have to do this the hard way. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter Open the file browser / explorer on your computer. Note: You may have to enable Show Hidden Folders / Files. Enter this in the address bar;

Windows: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted Win 7/Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted Win XP/2000: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted

Mac OS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Crash Reports/submitted Linux: /home/<username>/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/submitted

Copy the last 5-7 Recent File Names in the folder. Post the information in the reply box below.

more options

Did you try to start Firefox in Safe Mode?

You can check if you can start Firefox in Safe Mode by holding down the Shift/Options key.

more options

To FredMcD : I cannot start FF in Safe Mode.

I have tried every cut n' paste option in windows explorer, notepad & wordpad and the files will not copy to this box ??? Odd ............

Any ideas - it copies anywhere in windows 7 !!

Thanks

more options

To cor-el: As mentioned w/ shift key etc. it doesn't start in safe mode.

It starts w/o opening any browser windows, runs forever if I didn't go into task manager to end the firefox process.

Wish I had more to tell but you all have what I've observed every time.

Its done it in every upgraded version of FF since 33.1.1 to version 35.0 tried today. Rebooted each time, full shut down etc. acts the same.

Deleted the mozilla directory as instructed by several others.

I am at a total loss as to this behavior. Thanks.

more options

For TYLER DOWNER: Hello !!

I followed your steps to the letter and after installing FF 35.0 it did what all the previous versions did since 33.1.1 is simply run w/o any FF windows appearing. I confirmed in task mgr it was there running. Upon ending the FF browser process it stopped but this time NO Crash Report Box appeared whether I let it run for over 30 mins until Windows said very high memory usage by FF. That was a new change.

I never see a FF browser button on screen like a normal installation but the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox folder and C:\Program Files(x86)\Mozilla Firefox folders were created and had the folders and component files there.

This is so odd.

I have spoken to several other people I know who most a very PC literate and they found when a bad version of FF crashed / was damaged they were never able to install the same or a newer version on their PC even after doing all the steps you've mentioned.

So, there must be something else going on here !!

Mozilla after all the same complaints did not in a timely fashion come out with a fix - that resolved it for the majority of users. Obviously, its not unique to my PC or situation.

I am very loyal to mozilla & FF but its a huge disappointment not to be able to fix this. This is the first time in all these years an update has ever caused me a problem or been so difficult and yet not resoleable so far.

Everyone's help is very much appreciated as I hate using Chrome and will not use IE under any situation.

I am open to any other ideas. Thanks !

more options

Start your Computer in safe mode. Then start Firefox. Try Safe web sites.

Starting The Computer In Safe Mode;
Free Online Encyclopedia