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Firefox was bringing up unwanted adds and downloads please help

  • 10 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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It would not let me use the internet - it get going to pages wanting me to download things - I felt unsafe, tried deleting my firefox and downloading it again but it still kept doing the same thing. Have deleted it now but do what to download it again - have used it for 3 years and before today had no problem

It would not let me use the internet - it get going to pages wanting me to download things - I felt unsafe, tried deleting my firefox and downloading it again but it still kept doing the same thing. Have deleted it now but do what to download it again - have used it for 3 years and before today had no problem

All Replies (10)

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hello, you may have various malicious addons present. please perform all these steps once you reinstall firefox:

  1. reset firefox (this will keep your bookmarks and passwords)
  2. afterwards go to the firefox menu ≡ > addons > extensions and in case there are still extensions listed there, disable them.
  3. finally run a full scan of your system with different security tools like the free version of malwarebytes and adwcleaner to make sure that adware isn't present in other places of your system as well.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

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Hi tabitha1 ,

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Usually, when you uninstall Firefox using the uninstaller, it will leave behind all of the user settings. If the user settings have been modified by a third party program or extension, you will first need to remove the settings.
To do so, please follow these steps:

Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
  3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
    • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. 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.

Hopefully this will fix your Firefox issue. If not, please feel free to write below and the support team can provide you with some additional assistance.

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Did these things but firefox just continued bring up adds

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could you go to the firefox menu ≡ > help ? > troubleshooting information, copy the contents of that page and paste them here into a reply on the forum? this might give us a clue what is going on...

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Have just down all that and re installed firefox but its acting the same

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Thank you for trying to help

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Can you please give your about:support data?

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Do you have this problem with the Mac computer that you used to post this question or is that on another platform (Windows)?

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Its a mac

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Did you check the connection settings?

  • Firefox > Preferences > Advanced > Network : Connection > Settings

You can also do a malware check.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.