Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox crashes

Random crashes on all browsers, firfox, ie11, chrome. approximately 4 minutes or so apart, usually when opening other pages or running videos on youtube. ran firefox in safe mode and as yet no crashes. Updated all browsers

d172aa0c-b133-4d83-814f-011572150401

Random crashes on all browsers, firfox, ie11, chrome. approximately 4 minutes or so apart, usually when opening other pages or running videos on youtube. ran firefox in safe mode and as yet no crashes. Updated all browsers d172aa0c-b133-4d83-814f-011572150401

All Replies (3)

Sorry to hear about that.

In order to access your crash report, we usually need the crash report ID to start with bp- and if your about:crashes page does not show that, you could copy the URL on the crash-stats server from the address bar and paste that into a reply.

Crashes on YouTube and random sites bring Flash to mind. This is some standard guidance that addresses the most common issues with the Flash Player plugin. I'm sure you've seen some of it before, but just in case:

(1) If you have any recorders/downloaders that interact with Flash media make sure they are as up-to-date as possible, or disable them temporarily.

(2) Disable hardware acceleration in Firefox and in Flash

(A) In Firefox, un-check the box here:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced > General > "Use hardware acceleration when available"

That takes effect the next time you exit and start Firefox up again.

(B) In Flash, right-click the media and choose Settings, then the first mini-tab and uncheck the box to use hardware acceleration. More information in this support article from Adobe: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html#main_Solve_video_playback_issues

(3) Disable protected mode (Windows Vista and higher)

The protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin has security benefits, but seems to have compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it by creating or editing a settings file. The following pages/posts provide different approaches for that:

Flash needs to completely unload from memory (exiting and starting Firefox up again might help) before this takes effect.

Any improvement?

Hi,

Thanks for the really swift reply, very impressed!

Answering your questions above in order : 1) I don't think I have any downloaders or readers that impact. I'm not sure how i'd check, so I need to do some more research (browser permitting). 2) Did that and it didn't work, in fact it got worse, so I turned it back on. 3) I turned offm protected mode and again it still crashed.

So i've done the standard stuff, so hopefully this link will help :

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/d172aa0c-b133-4d83-814f-011572150401

The crash report refers to one of the JavaScript compilers. These are designed to improve performance on complex websites that use a lot of scripts. Unfortunately, the report isn't specific enough to point to a solution. However, if you like, you can try disabling the compiler. Either:

(1) Use Firefox's Safe Mode where it is automatically disabled; or (2) Change a setting in about:config to turn it off in normal mode.


You can restart Firefox in its Safe Mode using either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Restart with Add-ons Disabled
  • Help menu > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

Not all add-ons are disabled: Flash and other plugins still run

After Firefox shuts down, a small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

It may take a while before you know whether it's helping.


To turn off the Baseline JIT compiler in normal mode:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste jit and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the javascript.options.baselinejit preference to switch it from true to false

This might not have any effect during your current session, but should turn off the compiler after you exit Firefox and start it up again at the latest.