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Firefox no longer installs correctly, executable is not in the folder, message:"the item referred to by this shortcut cannot be accessed. You may not have the appropriate permissions." appears during installation.

  • 2 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

gtovini
gtovini
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I started to have hanging problems with Firefox and decided to reinstall. Got the latest version. Install gave following error: "the item referred to by this shortcut cannot be accessed. You may not have the appropriate permissions." with that firefox.exe was not put in the install folder and obviously application is not running. Since then I tried reinstalling many times. I uninstalled, cleaned cashes, used CC cleaner, emptied temp folders, tried version 7 all to no avail. I tried copying the Firefox.exe file that I extracted from the installation file to the location where it should go and that failed with a message about permission missing. I Took ownership of both the installation and the installed folder: no help. Please help

I started to have hanging problems with Firefox and decided to reinstall. Got the latest version. Install gave following error: "the item referred to by this shortcut cannot be accessed. You may not have the appropriate permissions." with that firefox.exe was not put in the install folder and obviously application is not running. Since then I tried reinstalling many times. I uninstalled, cleaned cashes, used CC cleaner, emptied temp folders, tried version 7 all to no avail. I tried copying the Firefox.exe file that I extracted from the installation file to the location where it should go and that failed with a message about permission missing. I Took ownership of both the installation and the installed folder: no help. Please help

All Replies (2)

gtovini
gtovini Question owner
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PROBLEM SOLVED! After finding a way to boot in safe mode (dual boot machine using GRUB), I uninstalled, cleaned up and reinstalled in a different folder (just added 7 to the name). It has been working since. Why it did not install in the regular way is a question for the ages!

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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If files already have been downloaded then remove the files in the updates and updates\0 folder.

You can also delete active-update.xml and possibly updates.xml, if present. 

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates
(%LOCALAPPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox)

You may need to update by starting Firefox once as Administrator via the right-click context menu: "Run as Administrator"