Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Firefox suddenly blanks all open tabs , this happens at random

more options

At random Firefox will blank all open tabs. if you try to open a new tab it will be blank. If you try to open a new Firefox while the old one is open, the new Firefox will be blank, its like they are connected. once you close Firefox, you can restart Firefox and everything is normal. Firefox does not think anything is wrong so no crash report is automatically generated. Need a way to generate a crash report manually, so the programmers can get the information on the problem.

Note: There does not seem to be a way to upload a text file on this form. I used the system information app to make a text file with all the information on the system. but have no way to upload it.

At random Firefox will blank all open tabs. if you try to open a new tab it will be blank. If you try to open a new Firefox while the old one is open, the new Firefox will be blank, its like they are connected. once you close Firefox, you can restart Firefox and everything is normal. Firefox does not think anything is wrong so no crash report is automatically generated. Need a way to generate a crash report manually, so the programmers can get the information on the problem. Note: There does not seem to be a way to upload a text file on this form. I used the system information app to make a text file with all the information on the system. but have no way to upload it.

All Replies (4)

more options

Hello,

The Refresh feature (called "Reset" in older Firefox versions) can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your bookmarks, history, passwords, cookies, and other essential information.

Note: When you use this feature, you will lose any extensions, toolbar customizations, and some preferences. See the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article for more information.

To Refresh Firefox:

  1. Open the Troubleshooting Information page using one of these methods:
    • Click the menu button New Fx Menu, click help Help-29 and select Troubleshooting Information. A new tab containing your troubleshooting information should open.
    • If you're unable to access the Help menu, type about:support in your address bar to bring up the Troubleshooting Information page.
  2. At the top right corner of the page, you should see a button that says "Refresh Firefox" ("Reset Firefox" in older Firefox versions). Click on it.
  3. Firefox will close. After the refresh process is completed, Firefox will show a window with the information that is imported.
  4. Click Finish and Firefox will reopen.

Did this fix the problem? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

more options

If I understand you, you are saying if I run Firefox without add-in's I should not have these problems. That defeats the whole purpose of using Firefox. I will try that in the short term. It is more likely that the major new change to Firefox is related to this. This seems to only happen when I have more than one Tab open, also it normally wait until I have had Firefox open for more than a hour. That being said it seems to be something more like a memory leak.

more options

Well I did like you asked, and it happened again today.

more options

Have you tried performing a clean reinstall?

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove your Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. This process does not remove your Firefox profile data (such as bookmarks and passwords), since that information is stored in a different location.

To do a clean reinstall of Firefox, please follow these steps: Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu New Fx Menu and click the close button Close 29).
  3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
    • Windows:
      • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
    • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
    • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.

WARNING: Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.

Please report back to say if this helped you!

Thank you.