That button is part of the build-in about:home page. You can set another page as your home page if you do not want that button. That entry can also be found in (Firefox >) History > Restore Previous Session. If all tabs are closed before closing Firefox then there is nothing to restore.

Thanks for your response. I do close the tabs prior to closing the window. However, when I close the window after closing the tabs and then hit the restore button, it appears on the last page I visited, not the home page. Also, if the back and forward arrows still navigate to pages I've closed in tabs -- including those that are password-protected, even if I've logged out. Not good for a multiple-user machine. I find some value in an uncomplicated home page, although one could choose another. But that still leaves the functional problem on Firefox. My solution was to revert to the last highest version of Firefox 3.6.

Are you using Tools > Options > General > Startup: "When Firefox Starts": "Show my windows and tabs from last time" ?

If you immediately close Firefox after closing tabs then Firefox may not update sessionstore.js properly causing some tabs still to get opened, so you may try to wait 10 seconds to see if that helps.

Thanks, Cor-el (any relation to Kal-el or Jor-el?). I've tried the settings you mentioned & they don't seem to help. What does seem to work best is closing the window after closing the tabs, then immediately re-opening and re-closing the window -- that makes the last session an empty session, so it does solve the problem but is kind of tedious. I've tried the various steps in session manager and tools/options that are related to this, but none of them solve the problem. There were some related suggestions in the faq's that involve going to the about:home page and changing settings (I may have that address wrong -- the page has a bunch of settings alphabetically arranged on it) -- but that doesn't do it either.

I, too, am frustrated by the eternal presence of this button on my startup page. It even seems to be fully functional if I've cleared my history before closing my previous session. While I'm not overly concerned with my privacy, as sometimes I unexpectedly would like to access something from my last session, I'd still prefer this button to be gone. There seem to be ways of configuring the browser to eliminate this constant option, but I don't want to disable the ability to restore after there has been a crash. Has anybody found a solution that simply makes the button go away, not just render it useless (because the last session was the homepage)?

The only thing that helps is to close all tabs or open a second (blank window) and close the window with the tabs.

You can always set a different page as your home because that Restore Previous Session button is part of the new about:home Home page. That will however still leave the same entry in the History menu to restore the previous session.

Start firefox go to 'tools', then 'options', select 'privacy' in the 'firefox will:' box select 'use custom settings for history' then check 'clear history when firefox closes' and then ok.