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Installed Firefox 20 update, but won't run and keeps telling me have to restart computer, which I've done 5 times.

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Downloaded and installed Firefox 20, but it won't start up. Window pops up saying "Your computer must be restarted to complete a previous update of Firefox. Do you want to reboot now?" I have rebooted several times, to no avail.

Downloaded and installed Firefox 20, but it won't start up. Window pops up saying "Your computer must be restarted to complete a previous update of Firefox. Do you want to reboot now?" I have rebooted several times, to no avail.

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Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall 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 http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
  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.

Please report back to see if this helped you!

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Try to run the Firefox program once as Administrator (right-click: Run as Administrator).

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

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The clean reinstall worked! Thank you. I spent many hours trying to resolve this problem and searched for the right solution. Finally found this one and it was the correct one.