Firefox only opening in Windows Safe Mode
Hello,
Recently, my Firefox has stopped opening and immediately closes upon start-up. The window asking if I would like to start in troubleshoot mode briefly flickers on the screen a few seconds later, and I am unable to start it in troubleshoot mode. I also have this problem with Google Chrome, but not with Microsoft Edge, which still works fine. I also downloaded Opera and I found that Opera works fine as well. I have tried various solutions I found online and none of them have worked yet. However, when I started Windows 11 in Safe Mode, Firefox still wouldn’t open initially but this time it did let me open troubleshoot mode, which I was able to succesfully start. In troubleshoot mode, I turned off hardware acceleration and all my extensions, and once I exited troubleshoot mode, Firefox was able to start normally in Safe Mode. However, I do not know if hardware acceleration or the extensions actually caused the issue because even if I turned them back on, Firefox continued to run normally in Safe Mode. Once I exited Windows Safe Mode, however, Firefox still continued not to open, and I still couldn’t access troubleshoot mode. Using the shift key trick to open Firefox in troubleshoot mode doesn’t work either. I would appreciate any help I can get with this issue.
Chosen solution
Your Microsoft account may have parental controls enabled which limits what browsers you can use, try creating a new local user account.
Also try renaming firefox.exe to something else but note that this will break DRM protected videos.
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You can do a malware scan, just to be sure.
You can use the MSConfig program or the Autoruns utility to see what software is getting started (be careful with disabling services).
Thanks for the reply. I have already scanned for viruses and malware and nothing has come up. I'm not sure what you mean by seeing what software is getting started, so I would appreciate it if you could elaborate. I have already done a clean boot and Firefox still will not open in a clean boot environment.
Chosen Solution
Your Microsoft account may have parental controls enabled which limits what browsers you can use, try creating a new local user account.
Also try renaming firefox.exe to something else but note that this will break DRM protected videos.
zeroknight said
Your Microsoft account may have parental controls enabled which limits what browsers you can use, try creating a new local user account. Also try renaming firefox.exe to something else but note that this will break DRM protected videos.
Thank you, the parental controls issue was exactly it. I have had this account since childhood and while most of the restrictions have since been removed, I recently had to go into Microsoft family settings to remove one that I had forgotten to remove, and in the process I may have accidentally enabled blocking unsafe browsers. I appreciate the help!