Firefox starts hidden (window not visible), but stays in process list. IE9, Opera, Chrome works just fine
Yesterday my Firefox 4 just stopped working. When I click on firefox icon - new process appears in task manager list, but I can't see firefox windows. After killing firefox.exe process I can start another one, but still no firefox windows are shown.
Tried to re-install (with deleted profiles and whole installation from Program Files folder). Tried 3.x and 4.x versions, no luck. This is no window focus problem (or it's position outside the desktop) - firefox.exe process starts, but no GUI objects are created (checked with sysinternals procexplorer)
Computer is well anti-malware and virus protected. Reinstalled newest NVIDIA drivers (WHQL), all updates from Windows Update. I've been reading that there was some prob. with NVIDIA drivers (9800GT), but this just happened suddenly - without new updates or installed programs - just during the day...
Modified by mayekk
All Replies (6)
tried this already.
Firefox don't show any error messages, none of them in event viewer, no crash minidumps in firefox/profile folder. Just starts without visible window....
Reinstalled DirectX dll's, NVIDIA drivers. Firefox starts, but without visible windows...
IE9, Opera, Chrome works just fine... Clean installation of Firefox (even portable version) don't...
Where can I find any error logs ? (no errors in MS event view, no minidumps in firefox folder)
screenshot from process explorer
Modified by mayekk
I'm having this same problem and here is how I got to this place. First, it doesn't happen every time. About 50% of boots will Firefox not work. (The process starts, but no window opens.) I have an SSD that is smallish... 64 GB running Windows 7. It is a machine I built myself. I have about 11 Gig free at any given time. I have a 2 Tb secondary drive where I keep my data and some, less used, programs. This is also where I keep my virtual machines (VM). I currently have 2 linux machines. Last night, I tried creating a Windows 7 (W7) virtual machine with an extra copy of W7 that I have. Well, I forgot to switch the target VM install area from my system disk to the secondary disk. When I realized what I had done, the install was almost finished and I had about 1 GB left. I worked to kill everything and delete the W7 VM. (That was a time consuming pain. PC was as slow as mud, which was to be expected, I guess.) So, after I got the W7 VM deleted everything seemed to be alright, until I tried to start Firefox and it wouldn't. Thunderbird 3 also won't start. As well as Norton Antivirus. I haven't tested any other programs; however, IE will start. As will Photoshop, Wiper.exe, CCleaner and Windows Media Player. I have my machine locked down; so, I'm confident it isn't a virus or malware. (I ran a full scan yesterday and this morning - when I got Norton to start.)
I'm not thinking this is directly a Firefox issue; however, any help would be appreciated. Heh, I don't have the time or the will to rebuild the software on this machine. I do have a backup, but I've never had much luck getting those to work properly.
Thanks for any help.
More information: I've found that many of my programs will not start. Pretty much everything other than Microsoft products (IE 9, Windows Media Player, etc.) MS Office will not start. When I look at the Process list it says the programs that are not opening a window are using 157K of memory (That may not be the exact number, I had it on a post-it and I forgot it at home. It was a small amount of memory, though.)
My research is leading me to believe this is a Windows Update issue. Something to do with a C++ compiler update; however, it started right after I filled my hard drive. Maybe I aggravated an already broken piece of software.
Still looking for answers...