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All of your personal settings, bookmarks, and other information are kept in your Firefox profile. Firefox needs an unlocked profile to start up, and if the profile is locked, it displays the message, Firefox is already running, but is not respondingA copy of Firefox is already open. This article explains what to do if you see this message and how to prevent it from showing at startup.
Table of Contents
End Firefox processes
If Firefox did not shut down normally when you last used it, Firefox might still be running in the background, even though it is not visible. If you try to open it while it's running, an error message will appear with the option to click . If that doesn't solve the problem, restart your computer or try the following options. Restart your computer to see if the problem goes away or try the following options.
Ubuntu Linux
- Click on and choose .
- In Administration, click on . Here you will find firefox-bin one or more times.
- Highlight the listing and click for each one.
Use the Windows Task Manager to close the existing Firefox process
- Right-click on an empty spot in the Windows task bar and select (or press Ctrl+Shift+Esc).
- When the Windows Task Manager opens, select the tab.
- Select the entry for firefox.exe (press F on the keyboard to find it) and click .
- Click in the "Task Manager Warning" dialog that appears.
- Repeat the above steps to end all additional firefox.exe processes, then exit the Windows Task Manager.
- Start Firefox normally.
Use the Windows Task Manager to close the existing Firefox process
- Right-click on an empty spot in the Windows task bar and select (or press Ctrl+Shift+Esc). When the Windows Task Manager opens, it defaults to the tab.
- Right-click the collapsible entry for Firefox in the list (press F on the keyboard to find it) and click . This will close all Firefox windows with no additional prompting.
- Exit the Task Manager and start Firefox normally.
Remove the profile lock file
Firefox may have shut down abnormally, leaving the lock file in place. To fix this, open the profile folder (see Finding your profile without opening Firefox) and delete the parent.lock file lock and .parentlock files.parentlock file.
Remove the -no-remote startup option
If you start Firefox with th-e -no-remote command line option, try removing this option.
Initialize the connection to a file share
If you store the profile on a file share, try accessing the file share beforehand using Windows Explorer.
Check access rights
Firefox must also have the right to create files in the profile folder. The error can occur if you try to use a profile from a file system mounted with read-only permission (e.g. a remote Windows share which doesn't have "Allow network users to change my files" checked).
To check if the profile folder has the proper permissions:
- Find your Firefox profile folder - see Finding your profile without opening Firefox.
- If you only have one profile, its folder would have "default" in the name.
- Right-click on your profile folder and select .
- Click on the tab.
- Make sure Read-only is not checked marked.
- Find your Firefox profile folder - see Finding your profile without opening Firefox.
- If you only have one profile, its folder would have "default" in the name.
- Hold down the Ctrl key while you click on your profile folder, and select .
- Make sure Ownership & Permissions is set to Read & Write.
- Find your Firefox profile folder - see Finding your profile without opening Firefox
- If you only have one profile, its folder would have "default" in the name.
- Right-click on your profile folder and select .
- Click on the tab.
- Make sure Folder access is set to Create and delete files.
Restore data from a locked profile
If you are unable to unlock the profile using the above methods, use the Profile Manager to create a new profile and migrate your data from the locked profile to the new profile. For information on how to do this, see Recover important data from an old profile.
Based on information from Profile in use (mozillaZine KB)
