Firefox only opens minimized, then is unresponsive
Windows 10. Last Firefox update made it so that if you minimized the program it wouldn't respond. I turned off hardware acceleration and that made it worse... Now when you open it, or immediately minimizes and is unresponsive. I can't undo the change I made, let alone fix the original problem. I have uninstalled and reinstalled, but that did nothing.
All Replies (7)
I am sorry to hear that disabling hardware acceleration made things worse. First I would like to recommend a clean reinstall.
Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove your Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. This process does not remove your Firefox profile data (such as bookmarks and passwords), since that information is stored in a different location.
To do a clean reinstall of Firefox, please follow these steps: Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.
- Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
- After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu
and click the close button 
).
- 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.
- Windows:
- Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
- Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
- Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.
More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.
WARNING: Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.
Please report back to say if this helped you!
Thank you.
Didn't work. When I opened Firefox it did the same thing as before...opens on the task bar and then is unresponsive.
Can you try to open Firefox by a different method?
I only ask, because I would like to know if it is the profile causing the issue or another program, perhaps an antivirus. Because it is not exactly this issue: Firefox won't start - find solutions since it is minimized and shows open.
Can you please try opening Firefox from a cmd window with the Profile Manager? Create a new profile as a test, and see if it will start.
Does this also happen if you start Firefox in Safe Mode?
Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode to see if that works.
- Windows: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox
- Mac: hold down the Options key while starting Firefox
Try to rename/remove xulstore.json in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed.
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
"AppData" (XP: Application Data; Mac: ~/Library; Linux: ~/.mozilla) is a hidden folder.
guigs said
Can you try to open Firefox by a different method? I only ask, because I would like to know if it is the profile causing the issue or another program, perhaps an antivirus. Because it is not exactly this issue: Firefox won't start - find solutions since it is minimized and shows open. Can you please try opening Firefox from a cmd window with the Profile Manager? Create a new profile as a test, and see if it will start.
That works. I created a test profile, and Firefox will start using that profile either from the profile manager, or by simply running firefox.exe. But it will not start if I select the "default" profile, which is the only other one that shows up. Presumably, the new profile works because it has the hardware acceleration enabled. However, the initial problem still exists...once Firefox opens normally, if I minimize it it will not come back. So I'm back to where I started regarding that...and I'm not sure how to make the new profile get my bookmarks from the old one.
Modified by AirzooGuy
cor-el said
Does this also happen if you start Firefox in Safe Mode? Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode to see if that works.Try to rename/remove xulstore.json in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed.
- Windows: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox
- Mac: hold down the Options key while starting Firefox
"AppData" (XP: Application Data; Mac: ~/Library; Linux: ~/.mozilla) is a hidden folder.
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
It will not start in safe mode either, unless I use a newly-created profile as the other poster suggested
You can add different parts of the default profile to the new one to preserve the items you would like to keep. However the steps corel mentioned help clean up the part of the profile that likely is causing the issue. Simply deleting that file should help, try that first then you can try below.
It is not the best user experience, sorry about that, however since we cannot get it to open so you can do a refresh - where Firefox would restore to defaults and add your profile info to a file called Old Firefox Data, this is the manual way to do it.
If you open the same folder, you will be able to see the two folders, they have the same name that shows up in the Profile Manager - default, and another name you named it a series of numbers and letters.
Open both of them and copy the important info into the new profile folder. then open Firefox up. This can be used as a reference: http://mzl.la/1xKrzkF