So I'm assuming you tried the steps at The thumbnails on the new tab page are missing - how to get them back?

If you clear your cache, How to clear the Firefox cache, close Firefox, then reopen and visit each of those websites, do the thumbnails come back?

Yes, I had tried the published solution.

Cleared cache/ Closed FF / Reopened FF Visit each site, wait to fully load then revisit New Tab. Results in no images.

Cleared All History/ Refreshed New Tab - those thumbnails to which I had connected still have the site name visible while all the others have cleared. But still no images.

Connected again, refreshed - still no images.

Cleared All History/ Closed FF/ Reopened FF/ Opened sites - no images.

Is the disk cache enabled and working?

You can check that on the about:cache page, via the location bar.

You can check the browser.cache.disk.enable pref on the about:config page.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

browser.cache.disk.enable is true http://screencast.com/t/itfhrJf81t

Whether it is working or not I would not know. How do I check that?

You should see the current cache usage on the about:cache page.

It is also reported in this window;

• Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cached Web Content

This is what I am seeing in about:cache http://screencast.com/t/kkzB5NFFl7qS

The offline cache is 0. Do I need to worry about that?

Are you using Clear Recent History to clear the cache on exit?

• Tools > Options > Privacy : History: [X] Clear history when Firefox closes > Settings
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Clear+Recent+History

Yes, Privacy was set to clear Active Logins and Cache on exit. Now switched off.

Cleared all History. Closed FF/ reopened FF Clicked through to sites, wait for load - no change.

Does it at least now show that the disk cache is in use?

Does it help if you close and restart Firefox?

Disk cache is now in use: http://screencast.com/t/2l5Wd3mbiH

I have been closing and restarting FF on each occasion when testing.

Now have 5 out of 9 thumbnails showing. No discernible reason.

Have connected to the remainder but they refuse to show.

That may be because of cache headers or secure HTTPS connections

• bug 754608 - [New Tab Page] shows thumbnails from pages with "Cache-Control: no-store", and HTTPS pages when HTTPS disk caching is disabled

cor-el Thanks for all your help but they've disappeared again, I suppose after I cleared cache. Can I be bothered to spend time sorting out this sort of c**p imposed on us for no reason - no, I can't. I didn't ask for the damn things and I will continue without them.

Thanks again.

If you clear the cache then you will have to revisit the 9 pages on the about:newtab to generate new thumbnails.
Future Firefox (16+) versions will use a separate thumbnails folder to store the images to avoid this issue.

I appreciate that. It just brings me back to my point; why should I indulge in more time wasting to achieve something that I never wanted or needed in the first place.

Thanks again.

If you don't care about the feature, then I wouldn't worry about the images. If you clear your cache, it will delete them. You can turn the new tab page off, or just ignore the blank thumbnails.

You can create a new Boolean pref browser.pagethumbnails.capturing_disabled on the about:config page and set the value to true if you want to disable the thumbnails altogether.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

@cor-el - lol. I really appreciate your efforts but this is a wall I choose not to beat my head against. I'm an internet user. You know, one of the 99.9% of the human population to whom Boolean preferences are something you find in Alice in Wonderland - and for whom auto-updates are both a godsend (because someone else is fixing the problems) and a nightmare - when they screw up as in this case.

I'm fine as I am. Please stop worrying about me. ;-)