Firefox does not restart after updating to 42.0
I'm trying to update from 41.0.2 to 42.0. The download completes but when I click the restart button, nothing happens for hours. I can only start again by rebooting my computer and firefox is still in the earlier version
All Replies (4)
Hello,
Sorry to hear that. You may try this to address your issue.
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.
- 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.
- After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu
and click the close button 
).
- 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.
- Windows:
- Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
- Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
- 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.
Hello Adriel and thank you for your reply. I will try your suggestion as soon as I am able to.
However, I must add that I know many users who would not understand a word of the technical issues you suggest. They are mostly ordinary users. I believe an update should be made to increase performance and security, add to the usability, not to lead the user to such frustrating tasks which many do not understand. I've been using FireFox as the most user friendly browser. If Mozilla is aware of the problem already, they should do something about it with another update.
Many thanks again. I will report back when I try the fix.
Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode by holding down the Shift (Mac: Options) key to see if that works.
It is possible that your firewall or other security software blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.
Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full, unrestricted, access to install for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.
See:
Well, before trying any of the solutions, I tried normally updating again and it worked normally. Thanks a lot for your assistance