Hello Wing-Ho.

Have you tried running Firefox in safe-mode?

If that doesn't help, I'm guessing some third party software is clashing with Firefox... Did Firefox every work correctly on this computer?

Does Windows crash and you get a BSOD and need to reboot the computer or does only Firefox crash and shows the crash reporter?

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes and Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly)

Re Morbus: Safe mode doesn't help. In fact, the crashes often occur somewhere when I'm selecting the options for safe mode (the screen where you can click whether to disable plugins, clear cache, etc). It appears the crashes always occurs a short period of time after firefox starting running, regardless of mode.

Firefox used to run perfectly well on my machine before yesterday. I did some software install (primarily upgrading Mathematica from version 6 to 7) on that day, but I seriously doubt if those were the cause, since uninstalling them and firefox, and then reinstall firefox, did not solve the issue.

I was not able to use windows restore to go back to a working configuration, windows say that some file can't be access when I attempt to restore.

Re cor-el: I guess technically it is a BSoD, i.e., the entire OS is down and automatically reboot (with memory dump and all that), although the blue screen never shows up when Windows run in normal mode. I tried running Firefox safe mode in Windows safe mode, the crash was all the same, and the blue screen did show up, with the error appears under the category of bad_pool_header. The screen disappear relatively quickly and I was not able to mark the location of memory that went wrong.

However, I doubt if it is hardware issue, since all other programs seem to work well, and the crashes are reproducible across many reinstalls. I can run memtest86 on my machine to confirm memory non-issue if that's necessary (I hesitate in committing machine time on that).

FURTHER INFO: The machine is dual-boot Ubuntu (32-bit) and windows 7 (64-bit). The problem occurs in the Windows 7 OS (Firefox runs well in Ubuntu). I have tried the following to no avail: (1) uninstall as many third-party apps that hook to firefox (skype, real player, and flash) before reinstall; (2) regressing to firefox 3.5.9; (3) run the portable edition from portableapps.com.

More details on the symptoms: shortly after firefox start (which can be anywhere in the "import setting page, the safe-mode option selecting page, or the Mozilla start page), the screen and mouse freezes, and the screen dim a little bit. Then blank (black) screen is shown and windows automatically restart.

This is very weird. When you said both Firefox and Thunderbird crashed your computer on clean installed, it immediately led me to believe it's something outside Firefox, something that is crashing your computer when using Mozilla software (it's the same engine, after all), or the engine used by Mozilla software that is having some serious grips with your computer.

I really don't know how to help you, I'm sorry. I will say, however, that what I would do is reinstall the operating system. That's a hell of a hassle, I know, and I'm not advising you to do it, but when I can't think of anything else, that's what I do.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help, once again. Hopefully someone else will know more about this.

1. this may seem random, but might be worth a shot... i think this problem often occurs because of registry errors with the fonts... this solution fixes that. if you browse to windows/fonts and immediately get a blue screen, then the fonts are your problem
2. first try going to control panel > fonts >font settings (on left) > restore default fonts
3. if you can't access fonts in the control panel then try this... in explorer go here: \\%COMPUTERNAME%\C$\Windows\Fonts (replacing %computername% with your computername).
4. then hit ctrl+a to select all the fonts.
5. once they're all selected right click and select "install".
6. when the dialogue box pops up saying that "[such and such] font is already installed, would you like to reinstall it?" click the box for "do this for all current items", and hit "yes"
7. reboot (just for grins), and you should be good to go

Sorry to bump this thread. Firefox 4 beta (pre8) crashed to me also with a horrible bsod (all blurred, so probably it crashed my ATI video card). The thing is that it happened few minutes after i installed Mathemathica Player 7, and played some examples from Wolfram. For example: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/search.html?query=algebra&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

I guess this two APPs don't behave nice with each other, probably since they both access the video card.

but i must correct my post - i do not know for sure if Math Player uses the video card and how exactly.

I think what I'm experiencing is somewhat similar. I can, for most of the time, use Firefox 4 without any problems. However, at random times, it crashes my video card, but Windows 7 says it has recovered from the crash. Firefox's window then has blacked out areas (where Aero glass usually is) and the close/minimize/maximize buttons dissapear. This is the only window that has this behavior after the crash recovery.