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Firefox crashes immediately after program startup

  • 10 replies
  • 15 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by jcholewa

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Tonight Firefox crashed after trying to open a new tab. Since that initial crash, I have not been able to open Firefox without it crashing within 5 seconds of startup.

I opened the program in safe mode, disabling add-ons and it still crashed. After that I updated to the latest version, (I believe) 7.0 for Mac OS X. After the update I tried opening FF but experienced the same result.

I have not tried uninstalling and re-installing, but I would hate to lose all of my bookmarks.

Any help with this issue is greatly appreciated, as I am currently stuck using Safari in the meantime, which is just.... inadequate :)

Tonight Firefox crashed after trying to open a new tab. Since that initial crash, I have not been able to open Firefox without it crashing within 5 seconds of startup. I opened the program in safe mode, disabling add-ons and it still crashed. After that I updated to the latest version, (I believe) 7.0 for Mac OS X. After the update I tried opening FF but experienced the same result. I have not tried uninstalling and re-installing, but I would hate to lose all of my bookmarks. Any help with this issue is greatly appreciated, as I am currently stuck using Safari in the meantime, which is just.... inadequate :)

Chosen solution

There are also specialized forums for Malware Removal such as those listed below, where you might be able to get more help:

Check and tell if its working.

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All Replies (10)

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-> Uninstall your current Firefox

-> Download latest Firefox version from one of these links using some other Web Browser:

-> Installing Firefox on Mac

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Your Bookmarks, Passwords and other data are stored in your Firefox Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data folder which is placed in another location so you don't need to worry about them.

Modified by Hasan

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Update Firefox to 7.0.1

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Modified by Hasan

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Thank you for helping me with this situation, mha007, I appreciate it.

I have uninstalled Firefox 7.0, then installed the latest version 7.0.1. My first time opening the browser it crashed again.

Let me know if the latest crash log would be helpful, or anything else you might need. Thanks.

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FF 7.0.1 has crashed 'bout 3 times after install (within 1 minute). How can it be that the last stable version was FF 3.x.x ? (IIRC the last stable was 3.6.16, and after that every version has been more or less unstable and I've had to revert back)

I was still using it a little while ago without any issues, only the last update to it made it somewhat unstable... Something has gone terribly wrong with these last versions.

Immediately after startup FF starts to "eat up" memory, a few seconds after starting memory usage is over 1,2 G and climbing up to 1,5 G and processor usage is 50% (from dual core, so I'd summize that one of the cores is at 100%)

When memory usage exceeds 1,5 G, then FF crashes

Modified by Miggis

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@jcholewa

Create a New Profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

-> Basic Troubleshooting: Make a New Profile

IF that New Profile works then you can recover your Bookmarks and Passwords from the Old Profile.

-> Recover important data from an old profile


@Miggis

-> Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly)


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Opened console. Attempted to navigate to the following location, as per instructions:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -ProfileManager


Console returns the following message:

"dyld: unknown required load command 0x80000022

Trace/BPT trap"


A window also pops up stating that firefox-bin quit unexpectedly, but other programs were not effected.

Modified by jcholewa

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-> Is my Firefox problem a result of MALWARE ??

-> Do a MALWARE check with these Malware Scanning programs. You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. Make sure that you UPDATE each program to get the latest version of their Databases before doing a Scan. Also, Close All other Applications (softwares) before Starting to Run Scans.

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Can't run any of them because they are executable files/Windows Vista or 7 compatible only. Is there a way for me to process a .exe in OS X, or a program that is compatible with my platform you recommend to use instead?

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Chosen Solution

There are also specialized forums for Malware Removal such as those listed below, where you might be able to get more help:

Check and tell if its working.

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Well thanks for all the help, mha007. It appears, at this point, that the issue has been resolved.

As found at the Bleeping Computer Forums, I downloaded the latest free home edition of Sophos Anti-Virus software. It did detect a few malware threats, which I quarantined. As stated, it is a free program that I would recommend to any Mac users as it does not take up many resources, and it should be a satisfactory protection for any at home use.

After a restart of my computer I was able to get Firefox up and running. It seemed to be hogging a lot of RAM initially and was slow to get running, but now I've been using Firefox problem free for the past 3-4 hours.

Anybody with the same issues I had, definitely run through the steps above and certainly try a malware scan/system reboot to hopefully clear out any issues.