Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox tries to open webpages as document files

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 13 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

discountsaint
discountsaint
more options

Quite frequently Firefox will either have trouble loading certain webpages (they will simply be blank with no apparent attempt to download any content until I close the tab and try again, sometimes more than once.

Other times, Firefox will, seemingly randomly attempt to open webpages as document files, as seen in the screenshot attached. Once this occurs it will generally occur repeatedly, and I will have to close the tab and try again several times to get it to work, if at all.

Quite frequently Firefox will either have trouble loading certain webpages (they will simply be blank with no apparent attempt to download any content until I close the tab and try again, sometimes more than once. Other times, Firefox will, seemingly randomly attempt to open webpages as document files, as seen in the screenshot attached. Once this occurs it will generally occur repeatedly, and I will have to close the tab and try again several times to get it to work, if at all.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

You can try these steps in case of issues with web pages:

You can reload web page(s) and bypass the cache to refresh possibly outdated or corrupted files.

  • hold down the Shift key and left-click the Reload button
  • press "Ctrl + F5" or press "Ctrl + Shift + R" (Windows,Linux)
  • press "Command + Shift + R" (Mac)

Clear the Cache and remove the Cookies for websites that cause problems via the "3-bar" Firefox menu button (Options/Preferences).

"Remove the Cookies" for websites that cause problems:

  • Options/Preferences -> Privacy & Security
    Cookies and Site Data: "Manage Data"

"Clear the Cache":

  • Options/Preferences -> Privacy & Security
    Cookies and Site Data -> Clear Data -> Cached Web Content: Clear

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window

You can remove all data stored in Firefox for a specific domain via "Forget About This Site" in the right-click context menu of an history entry ("History -> Show All History" or "View -> Sidebar -> History").

Using "Forget About This Site" will remove all data stored in Firefox for this domain like history and cookies and passwords and exceptions and cache, so be cautious. If you have a password or other data for that domain that you do not want to lose then make sure to backup this data or make a note.

You can't recover from this 'forget' unless you have a backup of involved files.

If you revisit a 'forgotten' website then data for that website will be saved once again.