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Firefox won't start - or stop!

Taurus

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Posted January 15, 2013 at 9:41PM

Help please, I have, or rather had Firefox as my preferred browser, fully up to date etc, but it seemingly without reason, stopped working. I found that when I tried to start it, it informed me that it is already running although Task Manager fails to identify it as a running process; restarting as requested fails to have any effect as does a repair/install. I have tried uninstalling it but 3 .dll files stubbornly refuse to go no matter how I try to sneak up on them. I have found reference to the problem on the interweb but as to yet, no luck with resolving it. Please help as I have been reduced to using Internet Explorer and it has taken me 5 days to get this far (OK, maybe a bit of an exaggeration but you get my drift). Breakfast in bed for a week for anyone that can restore my Firefox and my sanity.

Dave

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Jock1e

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Posted January 15, 2013 at 11:14PM

Have you got version 18 downloaded.

Maybe start in safe mode without networking. You might be able to delete it properly from there.

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Jock1e

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Posted January 15, 2013 at 11:15PM

Have you got version 18 downloaded.

Maybe start in safe mode without networking. You might be able to delete it properly from there.

There was this.

This

18-crashes-startup-due-malware-how-fix

Maybe download it again without running it and go into safe mode and try and install it again.

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Jock1e

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Posted January 15, 2013 at 11:20PM

Actually it should have been saved to you downloads when you updated it.

Try and run that again from safe mode.

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Jock1e

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Posted January 15, 2013 at 11:21PM

Page not found.It was supposed to tell you that if your Firefox crashes it could be down to Malware.

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finerty

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 12:44AM

download latest version from file hippo dot com onto a pen drive.

Or try unistalling it, and then try to download latest version from filehippo. See you MCL

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difarn

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 3:49AM

Did you remove the profile lock file as in this article from Mozilla?

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Taurus

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 2:04PM

Thank you everybody for your responses. I did remove the profile lock as per the article difarn, but only tried again to unsuccessfully remove the three stubborn dll files afterwards. However, after re-installing Firefox post removal, it started fine. I can now re-asign IE to the trash bin where it so rightly belongs and smile as the throbbing in my temples subsides. Breakfast in bed for all of you, cheers!!

Dave

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Jock1e

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 2:47PM

Taurus glad you got it sorted

I always use Firefox but I find it a bit slower loading on PCA now than I/E since the new Version 18 update.

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difarn

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 2:52PM

Same here Taurus. Jock1e, I actually find Firefox 18 better - the previous version caused slow loading of some web pages, notably online newspapers.

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Taurus

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Posted January 16, 2013 at 3:01PM

Now I have Firefox back (18) I have been testing them against each other and the results are consistantly in favour of Firefox. I have 32bit Vista on the machine in question and Firefox starts quicker, loads pages quicker and is generally more responsive than IE, and not by any small margin I hasten to add, but I guess you pay your money and you make your choice. It goes without saying that FF is my choice. Thanks again for your help.

Dave

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