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Firefox crashes constantly unless I turn all add-ons off. Is it better to run an older version?

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I have windows 7 and AGV. I just reinstalled Windows 7 and went through 200+ updates so it isn't that. Nothing seems to work. All I have as add-ons are the ones that mozilla puts there on install. Are these addons important? Would an older version be better? The other PC in our house runs XP and a really old version of FIrefox and we have no crash or security problems. I'm about ready to give up and go to IE which also crashes alot, but at least restores all my tabs when it restarts.

I have windows 7 and AGV. I just reinstalled Windows 7 and went through 200+ updates so it isn't that. Nothing seems to work. All I have as add-ons are the ones that mozilla puts there on install. Are these addons important? Would an older version be better? The other PC in our house runs XP and a really old version of FIrefox and we have no crash or security problems. I'm about ready to give up and go to IE which also crashes alot, but at least restores all my tabs when it restarts.

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Sorry to hear about the crashes.

Do you mean you are using Help > Restart with Add-ons disabled, and then starting in Firefox's "Safe Mode" and that avoids the crashes? This might not be a problem with extensions, because Safe Mode also disables Firefox from using hardware acceleration of graphics and video, to work around incompatibilities with graphics card driver software.

Couple thoughts at this point:

(1) Are you getting the Mozilla Crash Reporter dialog, or the Windows crash dialog? If you are getting the Mozilla Crash Reporter form, your Firefox may have logged some data that would help track down the cause of the problem. You can submit that data to Mozilla and share it with forum volunteers to see whether it points to the solution. Please check the last section of the support article "Firefox Crashes" for steps to get those crash IDs from the about:crashes page, and then post some of the recent ones here.

(2) Check out this article for safe sources to check for driver updates: Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL.

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One other things: Firefox should restore your tabs when you resume after a crash. But only tabs in regular windows and not in private windows, and probably not if you set Firefox to clear history at shutdown. Once your Firefox is a little more stable, let's review your settings here to see whether we can sort out that issue:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Privacy