I assume you have not checked the box for "Restore Previous Session" at the top of the Settings page (formerly called the Options page).

You didn't mention exiting out of Firefox before shutting down Windows, so I'm assuming you let Windows close/kill Firefox instead? If Firefox does not shut down normally, it will perform an automatic crash recovery the next time you start it.

Diagnosing Crash Recovery

To see whether that is what is happening, you can set Firefox to show a recovery screen that lists the tabs left open at the time of the "crash" which offers the option to either restore or start a new session. If you get this screen when starting Firefox the next time, then Windows is not shutting down Firefox in a normal way. Here's how to set that up:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to display an editing field, and change the value from 1 to 0 then press Enter or click the blue check mark button to save the change.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox.

Let us know what happens.

I shut down Firefox before shutting down my computer each day. What does "Restore Previous Session" do? It seems to me like that would definitely open the last page I was working on and not my home page. Mind you, I'm technologically illiterate so some things are just not comprehendable without explanation. Forgive me.

Restore Previous Session re-opens the last set of tabs you had open in Firefox when you closed it. That could be one tab or a dozen. If you closed Firefox using Exit on the menu, it could also be multiple windows (I just restarted for the update and got my 20 windows back).

Note that you can set the startup page to a blank page. Firefox no longer offers all choices in "Options/Preferences" as a possible startup choice. You may need to make the change directly to a pref on the about:config page to set the startup page. You can set this pref to 0 on the about:config page to start with a blank page.

• browser.startup.page = 0
  [0:blank; 1:home page; 2:last visited page; 3:restore previous session]

jscher2000, I think I did what you suggested but won;t know until I shut down and reboot my PC. As soon as I know if it worked, I'll let you know. Thank you!