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How do I Fix hangsup upon opening/closing a private window?

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

Chivalrous1_us
Chivalrous1_us
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Firefox says I need to close an existing instance of the browser after closing an opened private browsing window, regardless of whether I browse the web in the window or not. Simply opening a private browsing window makes Firefox hang upon exiting.

Firefox says I need to close an existing instance of the browser after closing an opened private browsing window, regardless of whether I browse the web in the window or not. Simply opening a private browsing window makes Firefox hang upon exiting.

Modified by Chivalrous1_us

All Replies (2)

Ajay Kumar Jogawath
Ajay Kumar Jogawath
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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 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!

Thank you.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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When you enter Private Browsing then Firefox saves the data from the current session to disk in the profile folder.
When you leave PB mode then Firefox will load this previously saved data from the profile folder to restore your previous session in regular mode.

When this isn't working properly, possibly because your security software is interfering or in case of other problems with your current profile then the hang that you describe can happen.

Try to create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.