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An update tries to run, but an error message stating "The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again." I can't open Firefox

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  • Last reply by cor-el

mp45
mp45
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I click on Firefox and it says that Firefox is installing your updates and will start in a few minutes. Then I get "The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again." this cycle never ends. Do I need to deinstall Firefox and re-install? If I do that, do i lose all of my bookmarks, etc?

I click on Firefox and it says that Firefox is installing your updates and will start in a few minutes. Then I get "The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again." this cycle never ends. Do I need to deinstall Firefox and re-install? If I do that, do i lose all of my bookmarks, etc?

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cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update (Software Update not working properly)

Remove the files in the updates and updates\0 folder:

  • C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates
  • (%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates)
  • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\updates
  • Do a clean reinstall and download a fresh Firefox copy from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all.html and save the file to the desktop.
  • Uninstall your current Firefox version and remove the Firefox program folder before installing that copy of the Firefox installer. Do not remove personal data when uninstalling.
  • 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.

You can skip the step to create a new profile, that is not necessary for this issue.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Clean_reinstall