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When forced to close then restart, FF reopens the offending “poison” site

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by Dave McKeen

Dave McKeen
Dave McKeen
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Once in a while when browsing unfamiliar Web sites I will try to close a page and get a dialog box that asks me to confirm that I want to leave the page. When I confirm I find myself in another page presenting the same dialog. Then I’m in a vicious cycle. I have to get into Windows Task Manager and force Firefox to close.

That is a problem I would like to know how to avoid. Like prevent the offending dlg from displaying at all.

However the bigger problem is when I restart Firefox it reloads the offending pages putting me right back into the endless cycle. Somehow I have been able to break the cycle bout would prefer FF to not reload pages after having been forced to shut down. Is it possible to prevent this from occurring?

In Tools > Options > General I have “When Firefox starts” set to “Show my home page”, which it does after a normal shutdown.

I am using FF 16.0.2 with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, nVidia GeForce GTS 450 with driver GeForce 306.97 - WHQL

Thanks

Once in a while when browsing unfamiliar Web sites I will try to close a page and get a dialog box that asks me to confirm that I want to leave the page. When I confirm I find myself in another page presenting the same dialog. Then I’m in a vicious cycle. I have to get into Windows Task Manager and force Firefox to close. That is a problem I would like to know how to avoid. Like prevent the offending dlg from displaying at all. However the bigger problem is when I restart Firefox it reloads the offending pages putting me right back into the endless cycle. Somehow I have been able to break the cycle bout would prefer FF to not reload pages after having been forced to shut down. Is it possible to prevent this from occurring? In Tools > Options > General I have “When Firefox starts” set to “Show my home page”, which it does after a normal shutdown. I am using FF 16.0.2 with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, nVidia GeForce GTS 450 with driver GeForce 306.97 - WHQL Thanks

All Replies (5)

user633449
user633449
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The reason the page is re-opening after you close Firefox is because by using the Task manager you are essentially crashing Firefox. By doing this, Firefox will on the first crash, try to restore all your tabs and windows. After the second crash however, Firefox will ask you what tabs you want to restore or if you want to start a new session.

rbmonical
rbmonical
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So unfortunately, what you are saying is: - A remote site can open a model dialog and take over Firefox. - If we use task manager to crash Firefox, we have to do it twice to get out of the remote site's control.

Is there a clean way to get out of the remote site's control without crashing Firefox?

Dave McKeen
Dave McKeen Question owner
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Thanks TD. My next question was going to be what RBM asked. And also... is there a way to suppress the dialog asking to confirm I want to leave the page?

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Set the Integer pref browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 on the about:config page to get the about:sessionrestore page immediately with the first restart after a crash has occurred or the Task Manager was used to close Firefox.

That will allow you to deselect the tab(s) that you do not want to reopen, but will allow to reopen other tabs.

See:

Dave McKeen
Dave McKeen Question owner
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Thanks cor-el. I set browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 but have not tested it yet. It would be great to have this toggle in Options > Advanced or in the security section of Options. It is a security concern.

My greater wish is to have a panic button in Firefox I can hit to kill a session immediately. Is it there and I'm not seeing it? Or would it be a worthy item to find its way to the wish list?

Any way to defeat the "Are you sure you want to leave this page" dialog?