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 refuses to update or to work - tries to automatically update in an unstoppable endless loop.

  • 2 replies
  • 15 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by roozta

wwollmuth
wwollmuth
more options

When I open Firefox it says "Foxfire is installing your updates and will start in a few moments; " then it says; The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again. and it does this over and over again all on its own in a loop that will not stop - and I cannot use Firefox while this is going on - I have to shut down the XP laptop, reboot and reinstall only to have it randomly happen again a little while later on.

When I open Firefox it says "Foxfire is installing your updates and will start in a few moments; " then it says; The update could not be installed. Please make sure there are no other copies of Firefox running on your computer, and then restart Firefox to try again. and it does this over and over again all on its own in a loop that will not stop - and I cannot use Firefox while this is going on - I have to shut down the XP laptop, reboot and reinstall only to have it randomly happen again a little while later on.

All Replies (2)

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

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update (Software Update not working properly) Remove the files in the updates and updates\0 folder: 

C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates
(%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates)
  • Download a fresh Firefox copy from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all.html and save the file to the desktop.
  • Uninstall your current Firefox version and remove the Firefox program folder before installing that copy of the Firefox installer.
  • Don't remove personal data when uninstalling.
  • It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
roozta
roozta
more options

I had a similar problem updating to Firefox 4 from 3.3.15 or 3.3.16. I could not even uninstall Firefox, it kept asking for a reboot. The way I got around this problem was to delete/rename a file called "firefox.exe.moz-upgrade" in "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox". After that I was able to run the Firefox 4 installer again and things worked fine.

Modified by roozta