Bookmarks and History dropdowns suddenly invisible
I am currently at home recovering from loosing part of a finger in an industrial accident and occasionally the fat bandage on the injured finger hits a key and causes something unwanted to happen. A while ago a menu opened that I had not want and I dismissed it by clicking elsewhere without looking at what it was. I think this may have been a mistake because several of the icons in my toolbar no longer function correctly.
Before this happened, when I clicked the Bookmarks or History icon a dropdown would appear and I could choose what I wanted. Now when I click one of them nothing seems to happen but if I move the cursor downward below the icon little boxes open with text that I recognize as web addresses that should be in the dropdowns. If I click Alt and use the menu bar the dropdowns there work.
Also, the Open menu button (3 horizontal bars) no longer seems to do anything. All of the other buttons do seem to work.
All Replies (10)
Use a pen or some kind of pointer.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac Options) key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?
No Mac Options button. I am running WinXP
I tried the instructions in the page you linked to and the instructions for entering safe mode start with clicking the Menu button that doesn't work I am going to try to restart with Add-Ons disabled through the menu bar and will report back in a few minutes.
Modified by sidecarbob
Can you attach a screenshot?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem
- Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
- Make sure that you do not exceed the maximum size of 1 MB
You can use one of these to set which toolbars to show.
- "3-bar" menu button > Customize > Show/Hide Toolbars
- View > Toolbars
You can tap the Alt key or press F10 to show the Menu Bar - Right-click empty toolbar area
You may have removed the button(s) from the Navigation Toolbar by accident.
If you right-click a toolbar item in normal (non-customize) mode then you can remove this item from the toolbar.
- "Remove from Toolbar" will remove this item from the Navigation Toolbar and moves it to the Customize palette ("3-bar" Firefox menu button > Customize)
- "Move to Menu" will move this item to the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list
- "Move to Toolbar" in the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list will move this item to the toolbar
Turning the Add-ons off made no difference.
I figured out that you meant to press shift and hold it down until the window opened asking if I wanted safe mode. Safe mode made no difference.
I should also mention that I have re-started the computer since this started and that I tried restoring Firefox and neither made any difference. Also, Firefox updated to ver. 41.0 shortly after the problem started.
I just checked my other WinXP machine and it is doing the same but my Win7 laptop is not.
Sorry. I don't know how to open and close quotes in this forum so I typed my replies in between and made them bold
cor-el said
Can you attach a screenshot? When I tried to take a screen capture I got a message that said Insufficient memory to create the bitmap. That is strange because I have taken screen captures hundreds of times in the past without that happening. You wouldn't see much anyway, just a little buff coloured box with a web address in it with the cursor arrow pointing at it.
You can use one of these to set which toolbars to show.
- "3-bar" menu button > Customize > Show/Hide Toolbars
The 3-bar button is not working at all.
- View > Toolbars
You can tap the Alt key or press F10 to show the Menu Bar- Right-click empty toolbar area
You may have removed the button(s) from the Navigation Toolbar by accident. The buttons are there. They just don't seem to be working If you right-click a toolbar item in normal (non-customize) mode then you can remove this item from the toolbar.
- "Remove from Toolbar" will remove this item from the Navigation Toolbar and moves it to the Customize palette ("3-bar" Firefox menu button > Customize)
- "Move to Menu" will move this item to the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list
- "Move to Toolbar" in the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list will move this item to the toolbar
I know all that. I tried resetting the defaults and putting everything back the way I like before I asked. I also put everything back after I reset Firefox
Modified by sidecarbob
sidecarbob said
I just checked my other WinXP machine and it is doing the same but my Win7 laptop is not.
Is there anything different about the Win system? add-ons plugins . . . . .
Not a lot other than the two that are acting strangely are running XP and the one that is behaving normally is running 7
With my son's help I downloaded Firefox 41 Portable to see if it was a Firefox problem or a Windows problem. When that did the same thing we downloaded Firefox 39 Portable to see if it was a compatibility problem with the newly released FF41 but that did the same thing.
Next we ran Microsoft Security Essentials on one computer and attempted to run it on the other one. On the one that it ran on the problem stopped but MSE said it had not found anything. On the one that MSE did not run on MSE had the same problem with parts not appearing.
I installed Spybot on the one that would not run MSE and it seems to have fixed the problem. This leads us to the conclusion that some sort of malware was the cause.
We are going to try to investigate more. I will report back if/when we know anything new or if the problem re-occurs.
Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.
Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. Each works differently. If one program misses something, another may pick it up.
I originally thought it was a Firefox issue because I hadn't noticed it anywhere else but when I tried to launch MSE and it was the same I knew it was something else.
I know from past experience that it is best to use at least 2 scanners. We used 4: Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot, Malwarebytes and Norton Power Eraser.
As I said before, I will report back if/when I know any more.