Right click the back button and select it from the list.

That does not work, either. The back button is grayed out and will not perform any action.

The back button will be greyed out if you didn't visit another site after opening a single site within that particular tab. If you opened a secondary tab and then accumulated history by visiting more sites, then right clicking the back button will give you the menu within that tab.

The only exception will be if you either have permanent private browsing mode enabled in Tools | Options | Privacy, or you hit CTRL+SHIFT+P to begin a private browsing session beforehand.

I understand the functionality and am not in permanent private browsing. I open a new tab, search google, and click a result. The google results page is the first page. The link clicked on from that page is the second page. I should be able to return to the google page because it should be in the history as the first page viewed on that tab. This feature worked before and is no longer working.

This issue is happening now with 4.0 and was recently happening with 3.6. Not sure why this feature stopped working.

Try running Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode. If it functions properly in that configuration, then one of your add-ons is the culprit.

Aha. So it does in fact work properly in safe mode. Now what? This is a newly re-imaged laptop with new install of Firefox, so I don't know why this is occurring.

Do you have McAfee SiteAdvisor?

If it does work in Safe-mode then disable all extensions and then try to find which is causing it by enabling one at a time until the problem reappears.

• Use "Disable all add-ons" on the Safe mode start window to disable all extensions.
• Close and restart Firefox after each change via "File > Exit" (Mac: "Firefox > Quit"; Linux: "File > Quit")

I do have McAfee SiteAdvisor. Is that the culprit or should I try troubleshooting the add-ons?

You can start with disabling McAfee SiteAdvisor to see if that helps to solve your problem.

I disabled the McAfee SiteAdvisor extension, which is actually the only extension, and the back button works in the scenario described. Is there any way to keep SiteAdvisor on and have the back button work? It used to function properly like that before.

You can try to update: /questions/753639

That didn't work. Any other suggestions?

You will have to contact McAfee and ask them how to fix this problem on your side.