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Whenever a Windows update occurs, my Firefox appearance changes for the worse; what can I do?

RDW2
RDW2
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Whenever I fire up FireFox after Windows has updated, the appearance of FireFox is horrible. The Navigation bar is about 2 1/2 inches tall with very little on it. So, my questions are: 1) how can I make the navigation bar shorter (i.e. not take up so much across the top)? 2) how can I stop this from happening?

Whenever I fire up FireFox after Windows has updated, the appearance of FireFox is horrible. The Navigation bar is about 2 1/2 inches tall with very little on it. So, my questions are: 1) how can I make the navigation bar shorter (i.e. not take up so much across the top)? 2) how can I stop this from happening?

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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I'm not sure why a Windows update would cause that.

Your toolbar layout and various window size parameters is stored in a settings file that sometimes becomes corrupted. You can rename the file and customize your toolbars from scratch. Here's how:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename localstore.rdf to something like localstore.old

Restart Firefox. Hopefully now your toolbar area will look more normal.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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By the way, some of your extensions are things that other users visit here to get help removing. You might want to review and curate your collection.

You can open the Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable.

Usually a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

To re-enble something that turns out to have been useful, you can simply return to this page and scroll to the bottom where the disabled extensions are clustered.