How do I PREVENT tabs/sessions restoring when restarting Firefox after a forced close/crash?
So... I'm running, say, a Google search, and I click on a link I think will be useful. But unfortunately, I've been taken! I get redirected to some scary Website I don't want to be at. I try to close the page, but a dialogue box pops up saying, "But wait! Don't you want to download our dangerous trojan horse? Y/Y?"
I don't want to click ANYWHERE on the dialogue box for fear of making the stupid situation I've gotten myself into worse. I can't close Firefox because it's "waiting for a response from you" so I force-close it from Task Manager. Whew!
EXCEPT then when I restart Firefox, it "helpfully" tries to restore my session... with the scary site with the scary dialogue box.
If I force a close a second time with Task Manager, Firefox fails to restore it again, so I can continue on my merry way and remember to be more careful on my searches, but it's damned annoying when it happens!
How do I make Firefox NOT want to restore sessions/tabs? All support info is about ENSURING session restoring, not prevent it!
And frankly, I can't think of a single time I'd actually want to restore a session after a crash. Worse comes to worse I'd rather just start from scratch anyway.
This doesn't happen often (I like to think I'm not entirely a moron and can avoid obviously harmful sites most of the time), but it's annoying when it does. I can keep Task-Manager closing until it won't restore, but I'd rather just have nothing restore at all!
All Replies (5)
You can do this by changing a hidden preference.
- Type about:config into the location bar and press enter
- Accept the warning message that appears, you will be taken to a list of preferences
- In the filter box type resume to bring up a small number of preferences
- Double-click on the preference browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to change its value to false
That change will stop Firefox trying to resume the session after a crash
Set the pref browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to 0 on the about:config page to get the about:sessionrestore page immediately with the first restart after a crash has occurred or the Task Manager was used to close Firefox.
That will allow you to deselect the tab(s) that you do not want to reopen, but will allow to reopen the other tabs.
See:
If you try to run Firefox to get to the about:config page you will be locked on the offending web page. You need to first disable your internet connection (wireless or local area connection), then start firefox. It will tell you it can not connect to the tabsd and ask if you want to just restart without the tabs. Click yes and you are good to go once you enable your connections.
22222
Modified by hestheone
Another way to approach this problem is to remove the session info with firefox closed. Firefox uses this information to remember what was last open when it closed so it can try to open it again. Remove this info, and it has nothing to try to open on your next session.
To do this:
1. close or kill firefox, as appropriate to your OS, if it isn't already
2. locate your profile folder; typically it looks like .../Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/<random chars>.default, especially if you're not using a profile manager. If you are, then 'default' will be replaced (if I recall correctly) by the name of your profile.
3. locate these files: sessionstore.js, and sessionstore.bak
4. remove their contents and save the files. I didn't try deleting the files; I'm not sure what firefox would do. It worked for me to remove their contents, and is probably safer. On *nix-like systems, from the command line, just do > sessionstore.js and > sessionstore.bak. On windows, open the files in notepad, or some text editor select all and delete, then save the files and close them. Make sure you don't accidentally save them as *.txt files or anything like that.
5. Then go back and start up firefox again. For me, at least, the previous tabs did not open again - firefox just opened with its normal single tab. This doesn't trash your history or change your settings, but lets you get into it so you can do whatever corrective actions to the settings you might want to.
6. HTH.