Hello,

I would like to suggest Safe Mode to make sure this is not being caused by Firefox, I have included the steps below on how to start Firefox in Safe Mode. Please report back if the program in your Task Manager still appears when you start Firefox in Safe Mode.

Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).

If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:

• Click the menu button , click Help and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.

If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:

• On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
• On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
• On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
  (you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)

When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.

To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

Hi, guigs,

I re-started Windows and started up Task Manager. No applications were running. Then I started Firefox in Safe Mode by holding down the Shift key. However, the "Start Firefox in Safe Mode" window did not pop up. I assume that Firefox started normally. For the next 5 minutes or so, my Firefox home page was the only application running. After that, the second Firefox application started (Justin Bieber - Bing) which I could not end. I am now back to my original problem.

When Firefox is running, is there a way to tell if it is running in Safe Mode?

Thanks for your help.

Guigs,

Please ignore my earlier reply. I tried it again, and I now have Firefox running in Safe Mode. I'll let you know what happens shortly.

Thanks.

I'm now running in Safe Mode with all my extensions and add-ons disabled, and the problem still exists. There is a second Firefox application (TopCelebrity) running which I can not end.

I neglected to mention that this problem just started yesterday. Firefox has been running flawlessly for several years on my laptop running Windows 7.

Thanks.

Dap8811, thank you for confirming that it is still happening in Safe Mode. If you force quit this task, do any of the tabs crash?

I am asking because I know that Firefox sandboxes some Firefox Content processes by tab or by website. If you are curious about multiprocess in Firefox you can read more about it here in MDN

However, you may benefit from removing any Top celebrity pages or tabs from your history (History > Show all History > Search for the keyword) as well as delete any cookies from the site you might suspect it from - Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

One last suggestion I have is a Firefox Refresh to set the profile back to it's defaults. Reset Firefox preferences to troubleshoot and fix problems And if you still see it try the recommended malware scanners from the community They are listed here.

Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware

Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

• Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
  http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
• AdwCleaner:
  http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
  http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml
• SuperAntispyware:
  http://www.superantispyware.com/
• Microsoft Safety Scanner:
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
• Windows Defender:
  https://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender
• Spybot Search & Destroy:
  http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
• Kasperky Free Security Scan:
  https://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

• Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
  https://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/disinfection/5350

https://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/utility

See also:

• "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked

I have been doing some troubleshooting. The "rogue" browser page has now occurred on Chrome, also. Apparently it is not a Firefox issue. Task Manager now has a second Chrome application running with the same TopCelebrity page displayed and I can't end that application, either.

I have run Malwarebytes and it quarantined 407 programs, but the problem still occurs.

Thanks for your help.

It sounds like whatever site your going to is the culprit for the extra Browser and that to me would signal you shouldn't use that site anymore.

Thanks for your thoughts, WestEnd. However, the second browser application starts within 5 minutes of starting Firefox or Chrome immediately after a Windows restart and going to my homepage (www.yahoo.com) and not leaving it. If I just leave the browser window open to the homepage, the second browser application will start in Task Manager within 5 minutes. Also, the problem just showed up for the first time on Monday, July 2, after having used my browsers in the same manner for several years without issue.

Thanks.

Don

Hi Don, could you add a column to the Processes tab of the Task Manager:

• Launch Windows 7 Task Manager (e.g., Ctrl+Shift+Esc)
• Click Processes if it's not already displayed
• View > Select Columns > Command Line

This new column should allow you to see where each firefox.exe process is launching from and what kind of command-line parameters it has. The normal instances of Firefox (if mine is normal, a big assumption) have command lines like this:

• "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
• "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -contentproc --channel="..." -childID 1 -isForBrowser ...
• "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -contentproc --channel="..." -childID 2 -isForBrowser ...
• [more childID processes]
• "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -contentproc --channel="..." -greomni ...

Do you have any that follow a different pattern?

Microsoft has another program similar to Task Manager that more clearly shows when a program is running as a "child" of another program. Not sure if that will be useful, but maybe:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

In another thread, this program revealed an executable named cloudctl.exe was launching an instance of Firefox for some purpose. https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1213921#answer-1104238

Thanks for the tips. After restarting Windows and without launching a Chrome browser, Task Manager shows 7 "chrome.exe" processes running. The commands that started them are all very normal and the same "Program files\x86\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe". Nothing looks unusual at all.

I started up Process Explorer, and it shows that one Chrome process has 6 children processes, but everything looks normal. I don't see anything that looks at all unusual.

Thanks.

Hi suggest this program as I have bought it know it works well : https://www.adlice.com/download/roguekiller/ I also suggest you gather the logs together and go here for help as they are really great, been there, done that myself :

• https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/9573-im-infected-what-do-i-do-now/

Hi dap8811, I'm not sure how we got onto the topic of chrome.exe processes. Did you notice anything unusual about Firefox processes?