Hi urgh,

Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support. I understand that when you are using the search bar, there are many incidents where the search bar "hangs" when you type or hit enter. So in other words it does not show any results or any auto complete items either. Thank you for reporting this!

I would like to try to reproduce the issue and add it to a bug in mozilla. May I ask you what your update preferences are for your search bar? This can be found in the menu Firefox> Preferences> Advanced> Update at the bottom of the option window.

Also if you can reproduce the issue these are some steps to gather troubleshooting information;

1. Please collect logs while reproducing this issue
2. Go to about:config in the url of a new window and select "I will be careful"
3. On this page search for browser. search. log and set this to true
4. Please restart the browser
5. Please open up the JS Console from Tools> Web Developer> Web Console
6. try to search in any of the engines, please take note of which one and if you are ok you can attach the log information in a private message. If not, any steps or reproduction steps are helpful.

There are a few other option to check the values of on the about:config page: What are these values set to?

• browser.search.suggest.enabled true ?

• browser.search.useDBForOrder: True ?

Thank you for your help, if any other contributors have any ideas for more troubleshooting, please do not hesitate.

My update preferences:

Automatically update, warn if this will disable add-ons; use a background service; automatically update search engines.

Both those config settings are true.

I'll send the error logs. Thanks for responding.

My update preferences are:

automatically update, warn if this will disable add-ons; use a background service; automatically update search engines.

Both those config settings are true. I've sent the console log, thanks for responding.

Ok, I filed a bug for this issue, please feel free to cc yourself to track it: 942312

If there are any other questions in the meantime, or if any other contributors have any other suggestions, please do not hesitate!

One other thought: Safe Mode disables extensions, but does not disable plugins. You may want to check for plugin updates and disable (set to "Never Activate") the nonessential ones to see whether that makes any difference.

To open the Add-ons page, either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Plugins. The link to check for updates is just above the list.

Do you still see all default search engines in the search engine drop-down list?

Try to delete the search.json file and possible search-metadata.json and search.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder to reset the search engines to the default.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_search_or_add_new_engines

Firefox will rebuild the search.json file from the default search engines in the "browser\searchplugins" folder in the Firefox program folder and the searchplugins folder in the Firefox profile folder.

You can check if you have the XML files of the default search engines including Google in the browser\searchplugins folder in the Firefox program folder.

If not then you need to reinstall Firefox.

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

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

cor-el if you'd read my post you'd know I'd already tried all of these things.

Did you try a new test profile as well?

Read my damn post.

Sorry if you are understandably frustrated at Firefox's Searchbar not working, despite dilligent troubleshooting steps.

I am wondering about two things

After some of these, the search bar will work exactly once using enter or the button before reverting to uselessness. 

1. Would it be possible for you urgh to try to explain and repeat whatever steps are necessary to get the search working exactly once. Especially if that can be logged possibly it would give someone clues as to what the problem is.
   • Do whatever sequence of steps is tried reproduce this one off revival of the search ability reliably and repeatedly ?
   • I realise you have tried new profiles and file deletions etc but for instance we do not know the order of those steps or when or whether Firefox was open of closed.
   • Are you able to carefully list the steps that work please ?
2. I am not certain that we know that a new clean profile has been tried in safe mode and with all plugins disabled. (All at the sametime)

Also you may not like using the addressbar to search,

• But does it work to search from ?
• And if it does is that with each different search bar engine ?
• If it fails at all, would you mind trying try with
  - Only the default search engines
  - In Firefox's safemode
  - and With all plugins disabled.

As an aside it seems rather odd filing a bug and marking it reproducible unless others can reproduce this. Or is anyone else seeing a similar problem?

Steps which cause the search to work exactly once include:

Deleting the search files (json, sqlite etc.) Disabling plugins Starting in safe mode.

After restarting firefox. I'm pretty sure a new profile and a clean reinstall did the same thing.

Doing anything else in firefox doesn't stop the searchbar from functioning, like I can do whatever for half an hour and use the address bar and change any settings but as soon as I search once it won't work after that.

The address bar works fine with all engines.

I tried each solution individually and kept firefox closed each time (except, obviously, for disabling plugins or trying the searchreset addon where I restarted it instead), I didn't pile these steps up. So there's no "sequence of steps" to report. I didn't carry any files over to clean reinstalls or new profiles.

Safe Mode doesn't disable plugins. Please see: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/978011#answer-504294

Edit: I think you meant to have those on separate lines, so never mind.

Yeah sorry I forget that the formatting doesn't carry over from these response boxes! It may look a little annoying.

I can't recall any reason for the bar to stop working that wasn't caused by some kind of add-on...

Does it make any difference if you disable search suggestions? There's a checkbox in the Manage Search Engines dialog available from the bottom of the drop-down menu you use to select the search engine.

Does it make any difference if you hold Alt when pressing Enter or hold Ctrl when clicking the magnifying glass icon? By default, these will open the search in a new tab. (Similarly, holding Shift when clicking the magnifying glass icon should open the search in a new window.)

Afraid not :(

Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

Do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before (re)installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.

Download a fresh Firefox copy and save the file to the desktop.

• Firefox 25: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html

Uninstall your current Firefox version, if possible, to cleanup the Windows registry and settings in security software.

• Do NOT remove personal data when you uninstall your current Firefox version, because all profile folders will be removed and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords from profiles of other Firefox versions.

Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.

• (32 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
• (64 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"

• It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_Firefox

Your bookmarks and other personal data are stored in the Firefox profile folder and won't be affected by an uninstall and (re)install, but make sure that "remove personal data" is NOT selected when you uninstall Firefox.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Clean_reinstall

Not the first time I've tried this, still doesn't work.

Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that 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:
  http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
• Windows Defender: Home Page:
  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx
• Spybot Search & Destroy:
  http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
• Kasperky Free Security Scan:
  http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan

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

• Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
  http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446

See also:

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

Ahhh hang on I forgot to delete the program folders! It's working now :) Here's what I did:

1. exported bookmarks just in case 2. uninstalled firefox, cleaned registry and cache using cccleaner 3. deleted program folders 4. searched c drive for "mozilla" and "firefox" and deleted every file that came up that i had permissions to lol :| 5. reinstalled 25.1

and now it's working okay! Had to reimport my bookmarks and personal info but that's okay. Thanks for all your patience and help.