Hello,

The Refresh feature (called "Reset" in older Firefox versions) can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your bookmarks, history, passwords, cookies, and other essential information.

Note: When you use this feature, you will lose any extensions, toolbar customizations, and some preferences. See the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article for more information.

To Refresh Firefox:

1. Open the Troubleshooting Information page using one of these methods:
   • Click the menu button , click help and select Troubleshooting Information. A new tab containing your troubleshooting information should open.
   • If you're unable to access the Help menu, type about:support in your address bar to bring up the Troubleshooting Information page.
2. At the top right corner of the page, you should see a button that says "Refresh Firefox" ("Reset Firefox" in older Firefox versions). Click on it.
3. Firefox will close. After the refresh process is completed, Firefox will show a window with the information that is imported.
4. Click Finish and Firefox will reopen.

Did this fix the problem? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

I don't want to revert to any old settings. Let me try again.... I have Firefox set so that all cookies and history are deleted/removed upon exiting Firefox. I also have it set to NOT save any password or login information. Two days ago everything was as it should be. Firefox would remove all history and logins, and I would have to re-sign in to websites with my e-mail and password. This is what I want.

As it stands now, I am still logged into google, facebook, etc. even after exiting Firefox and restarting. I have checked my settings and everything is still as I had it. I don't want Firefox to save anything, yet my login information is still being retrieved by these websites. This is a security problem for me, as it's very easy to forget to logout of a site and anyone could turn my computer on and have access to my e-mail, facebook, etc. Why has this suddenly changed and is there anything I can do about it?

Hi idlehands212, is it possible that Firefox is not doing a full and complete shutdown? During your session, Firefox maintains a crash recovery file (recovery.jsonlz4) which stores your open tabs/pages including session cookies. If Firefox is doing an automatic crash recovery at startup, that would explain why the previous session's cookies, keeping you logged in to sites, survived.

Could you test this change, it would prevent Firefox from saving session cookies and filled-in form data for secure (HTTPS) sites in the crash recovery file:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.privacy_level preference and enter the desired value:

• 0 = save for all sites (default)
• 1 = save for HTTP sites, do not save for HTTPS sites <= try this
• 2 = do not save for any sites

For whatever reason, Firefox is working correctly again. I can't explain it, except to say that the previous answers were probably correct. It must have been recovering from a crash or not completely shutting down. Weird that it lasted for several hours, and that a complete shutdown of the computer didn't solve it.

jscher2000 said

Hi idlehands212, is it possible that Firefox is not doing a full and complete shutdown? During your session, Firefox maintains a crash recovery file (recovery.jsonlz4) which stores your open tabs/pages including session cookies. If Firefox is doing an automatic crash recovery at startup, that would explain why the previous session's cookies, keeping you logged in to sites, survived. Could you test this change, it would prevent Firefox from saving session cookies and filled-in form data for secure (HTTPS) sites in the crash recovery file: (1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk. (2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered (3) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.privacy_level preference and enter the desired value:

• 0 = save for all sites (default)
• 1 = save for HTTP sites, do not save for HTTPS sites <= try this
• 2 = do not save for any sites

Will this solution delete saved passwords? I'm having the same problem but I don't want to lose my saved passwords. Right now I'm using CCleaner after I close the browser and deleting the cache and cookies, etc...that way. I'm not big on that program, I would prefer firefox did it's job.

Hi evie127, changing how session history is stored, or setting Firefox to delete cache and cookies when it shuts down, will not erase logins you have saved in Firefox's password manager. Saved logins are stored completely separately from cookies and cached files.

See the "How do I make Firefox clear my history automatically?" section of: Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox -- there are checkboxes for different types of data. Make sure to only check the ones you want removed.