How to stop 34.0.5 sending me to puriffer.com with no tab & no place to type in different URL?
I've just installed Firefox 34.0.5. Now whenever I open Firefox, it goes to my home page (blank page) for less than an eyeblink and then shifts to the puriffer.com page. Once there, there is nothing at the top of the web page -- no tab, no space in which to type a URL, no line of 'File', 'Tools' and 'Help', so no way to get out of that page but to either hit Alt-F4 or to open the Taskmaster and END Firefox. In other words, Firefox has become useless since 'upgrading' to 34.0.5. How do I get Firefox to simply stay at my home page until I tell it to do something else?
I am on a Dell XPS M1530 with Vista Ultimate OS.
Chosen solution
Next time you start Firefox, try using its Safe Mode. To do that, hold down the Shift key while double-clicking the Firefox shortcut.
A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Reset).
This will deactivate extensions. If Firefox starts normally, then I would suspect a bad extension. Here is my suggested procedure for finding and removing bad add-ons. This is based on the unfortunate fact that many bad add-ons arrive as part of a free software download rather than something you installed intentionally from the add-ons site.
(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Take out as much trash as possible here.
(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:
- Ctrl+Shift+a
- "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".
In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions.
Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.
Any improvement?
(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.
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Firefox may be flipping to full screen mode, or Flash player full screen mode. To escape, you could try:
- Firefox full screen view
- The F11 key to toggle back to normal view
- sliding the mouse to the top of the display and right-clicking a blank area of the tab bar to get a short menu with Exit Full Screen Mode
- Flash Player full screen view: normally the Esc key will cancel this
Alternately, are you able to launch a new window using Ctrl+n? After that, to close the problem window, you could try right-clicking the Firefox icon on the Windows Vista Taskbar and "x" the unwanted window.
Hopefully we can get out of the "restoring problem after crash" loop and then figure out how this situation got started in the first place...
Chosen Solution
Next time you start Firefox, try using its Safe Mode. To do that, hold down the Shift key while double-clicking the Firefox shortcut.
A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Reset).
This will deactivate extensions. If Firefox starts normally, then I would suspect a bad extension. Here is my suggested procedure for finding and removing bad add-ons. This is based on the unfortunate fact that many bad add-ons arrive as part of a free software download rather than something you installed intentionally from the add-ons site.
(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Take out as much trash as possible here.
(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:
- Ctrl+Shift+a
- "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".
In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions.
Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.
Any improvement?
(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.