Hi Bill, sorry to hear about the crashes. Which of these is the most like what you experience:

• Firefox just disappears
• Firefox closes and then you see the Mozilla Crash Reporter allowing you to submit a crash report
• Firefox closes and Windows displays the generic Windows crash dialog (referring either to firefox.exe or plugin-container.exe)
• Something else?

If you got the Mozilla Crash Reporter form, Firefox may have logged some data that would help track down the cause of the problem. Otherwise, it's normal not to see anything on the about:crashes page.

While you are troubleshooting this, it might be helpful to try setting Flash to Click-to-Play ("Ask to Activate"). This will delay Flash from starting on a page until you approve it.

To set "Ask to Activate", open the Add-ons page using either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a (Mac: Command+Shift+a)
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Plugins. Look for "Shockwave Flash" and change "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate".

With this setting, when you visit a site that wants to use Flash, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and usually (but not always) one of the following: a link in a black rectangle in the page or an infobar sliding down between the toolbar area and the page.

The plugin notification icon in the address bar typically looks like a small, dark gray Lego block. When the page wants to use a blocked plugin, the icon turns red to alert you to the concern.

If you see a good reason to use Flash, and the site looks trustworthy, you can go ahead and click the notification icon in the address bar to allow Flash. You can trust the site for the time being or permanently.

But some pages use Flash only for tracking or playing ads, so if you don't see an immediate need for Flash, feel free to ignore the notification! It will just sit there in case you want to use it later.

Not a solution, but if the crashes don't occur without Flash activated, that tells us something.

Thank you for the suggestion. Changed Flash to "Ask to Activate" and if prompted denied it. Yesterday afternoon it seemed to work without issue, but testing this morning on a Yahoo page and Firefox again crashed. This morning before the crash it did not prompt to activate Flash at all.

The window that pops up says:

Firefox Firefox has stopped working A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program. Close the program <-- button

The Mozilla Crash Reporter did not appear.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks! Bill

Hi Bill, Windows probably logged some additional detail and exposes it in the Event Viewer somewhere, but I'm not good at interpreting Windows crash data.

With the understanding that it will disable your extensions, could you test in Firefox's Safe Mode? In Safe Mode, Firefox temporarily deactivates extensions, hardware acceleration, and some other advanced features to help you assess whether these are causing the problem.

If Firefox is not running: Hold down the Shift key when starting Firefox.

If Firefox is running: You can restart Firefox in Safe Mode using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Restart with Add-ons Disabled
• Help menu > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

and OK the restart.

Both scenarios: A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

Not sure how long it will take to know whether that is helping...