Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox freezes when opening external links

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by FredMcD

TypoMustakes
TypoMustakes
more options

Firefox, upon opening with a link passed as a parameter (clicking a link in some other application which opens up the default browser to that URL), freezes completely and prevents me from manually opening a new instance, saying that another Firefox instance is already running. Opening a system monitor shows a running Firefox process, pointing to the previously clicked URL, but does not respond at all. CPU and RAM usage are both 0 for this process, so it's likely not even doing anything. Not even a SIGTERM will terminate the process, I have to throw at least two SIGKILLs at the process for it to die. Why is this a thing? I've been using this browser on this exact same system for almost a year now, this was never a problem before.

OS: Arch Linux Kernel: Linux, 5.9.14-arch1-1 Firefox Version: 84.0.1

Firefox, upon opening with a link passed as a parameter (clicking a link in some other application which opens up the default browser to that URL), freezes completely and prevents me from manually opening a new instance, saying that another Firefox instance is already running. Opening a system monitor shows a running Firefox process, pointing to the previously clicked URL, but does not respond at all. CPU and RAM usage are both 0 for this process, so it's likely not even doing anything. Not even a SIGTERM will terminate the process, I have to throw at least two SIGKILLs at the process for it to die. Why is this a thing? I've been using this browser on this exact same system for almost a year now, this was never a problem before. OS: Arch Linux Kernel: Linux, 5.9.14-arch1-1 Firefox Version: 84.0.1
Attached screenshots

All Replies (1)

FredMcD
FredMcD
more options

Is this with all websites/pages, some, a few?

Try this: Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh).

Now, drop that window to the taskbar. After, try to open a link from another application. Is the problem still there?