Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

I tried to upgrade from FF7 beta to FF7 and now I have no Firefox at all

  • 1 odgovor
  • 1 ima ovaj problem
  • 1 view
  • Posljednji odgovor poslao alg24

more options

I was using the FF7 beta. When I saw that FF7 had been released, I downloaded and tried to install it, without uninstalling the beta first. That may have been a mistake. It got partway through the install process and then asked me to reboot the computer. After the reboot, my FF shortcut no longer worked ("Searching for firefox.exe"). I used another browser to download the installer again and ran it, only to be told that I needed to reboot my computer in order for a previous install to complete. I rebooted; no change. Attempting to remove the existing installation in Add/Remove Programs has not helped, though Mozilla Firefox is no longer listed there.

I'm using Windows XP and my standard user account doesn't have admin privileges. This hasn't been a problem for Firefox until, perhaps, now. I've tried running the installer from an admin account as well, with the same result.

Is there anything I can remove manually to fix this?

I was using the FF7 beta. When I saw that FF7 had been released, I downloaded and tried to install it, without uninstalling the beta first. That may have been a mistake. It got partway through the install process and then asked me to reboot the computer. After the reboot, my FF shortcut no longer worked ("Searching for firefox.exe"). I used another browser to download the installer again and ran it, only to be told that I needed to reboot my computer in order for a previous install to complete. I rebooted; no change. Attempting to remove the existing installation in Add/Remove Programs has not helped, though Mozilla Firefox is no longer listed there. I'm using Windows XP and my standard user account doesn't have admin privileges. This hasn't been a problem for Firefox until, perhaps, now. I've tried running the installer from an admin account as well, with the same result. Is there anything I can remove manually to fix this?

All Replies (1)

more options

OK... I found a Mozilla Support article - https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The%20program%20must%20close%20to%20allow%20a%20previous%20installation%20attempt%20to%20complete - which says deleting xpicleanup.dat will solve the problem; but I guess that's out of date (or the presence of that file isn't the only cause of the bug), because there's no xpicleanup.* on my machine. However, elsewhere in this forum - https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/786890 - I found a suggestion to install the new version somewhere other than the default folder. I did that, and it worked; and it even preserved my bookmarks, add-ons and previously-opened tabs. (If anyone finds this while trying to solve their own upgrade/install failure: choose Custom rather than Standard install, and just change the suggested folder name.)

The only remaining sign of the problem is the icon in my Quick Launch area: if I try to use it to launch Firefox, I still get the error "Windows cannot open this file: firefox.exe.moz.delete". Having recorded that here for posterity, I'll be replacing the icon.