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Firefox Spontaneously Stops Working/Changes Keyboard Commands

RKai
RKai
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I've been having a lot of problems with firefox suddenly refusing to work.

When browsing firefox will suddenly cease working as normal. Pressing Page Up/Down will only scroll through the tabs, not move the page up/down. If I try to type anything (either in a search bar or on a webpage etc) it will instead act as if I've done a shortcut (opening the upload file menu for instance). The only way I can get firefox working as normal is to close everything down, meaning I lose everything (lost tabs won't reopen either when this happens).

This isn't the result of me accidentally pressing a key; it will spontaneously happen even when nothing has happened. I will be scrolling down a page and suddenly my tabs will start moving instead.

It's really infuriating and like playing Russian roulette. I've lost a lot of work because of this and it's getting to the point where I'm better off using another browser as I'm sick of taking the risk. How can I stop this from happened?

I've been having a lot of problems with firefox suddenly refusing to work. When browsing firefox will suddenly cease working as normal. Pressing Page Up/Down will only scroll through the tabs, not move the page up/down. If I try to type anything (either in a search bar or on a webpage etc) it will instead act as if I've done a shortcut (opening the upload file menu for instance). The only way I can get firefox working as normal is to close everything down, meaning I lose everything (lost tabs won't reopen either when this happens). This isn't the result of me accidentally pressing a key; it will spontaneously happen even when nothing has happened. I will be scrolling down a page and suddenly my tabs will start moving instead. It's really infuriating and like playing Russian roulette. I've lost a lot of work because of this and it's getting to the point where I'm better off using another browser as I'm sick of taking the risk. How can I stop this from happened?

All Replies (1)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Sorry to hear this. Another user reported a similar issue in this thread: Bizarre behavior on laptop in Windows 8.

What seems to be happening is that Firefox is mistakenly reading the Ctrl key as pressed down. This could be an issue in how Windows passes the data to Firefox, or it might be a problem in Firefox itself.

Often pressing the Ctrl key several times will clear this.

But as for what triggers it, I could only guess.

Do you use any security software that modifies keyboard entry, for example, an anti-keylogger feature?