Actually, the purpose of this forum is to help stop your Firefox crashes.

When Firefox crashes, it usually records information about what was happening at that moment. You can submit that data to Mozilla and share it with forum volunteers to see whether it points to the solution. Please check the support article "Firefox Crashes" (especially the last section) for steps to get those crash IDs, and then post some of the recent ones here.

If that's not possible, have you tried Firefox's Safe Mode? That's a standard diagnostic tool to deactivate extensions and some advanced features of Firefox. More info: Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode.

You can restart Firefox in Safe Mode using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Restart with Add-ons Disabled
• Help menu > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

Not all add-ons are disabled: Flash and other plugins still run

After Firefox shuts down, a small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Reset).

If Firefox works better (is more stable) in Safe Mode, we could suggest various next steps based on that information. If it's just as bad, that would be good to know as well.

By the way, your plugin list shows two versions of Flash currently running (12 and 14). You should deactivate or uninstall one of them, probably the older version.

To see whether you can disable Flash 12 in Firefox, open the Add-ons page using either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Plugins.

Look for "Shockwave Flash" and if you see two entries, change the older one to "Never Activate".

If the older version isn't displayed on the page, you may need to do a full uninstall of Flash followed by a reinstall of the current version. (That's safer than going out to your Windows folder and manually deleting the DLL file.)

This support article has a link to Adobe's uninstaller: Flash Plugin - Keep it up to date and troubleshoot problems.

Tell ya what .. I'll go back to BETA testing days and put on my bug tracking hat and see what I can do with helping pin down Mozilla's problem. I can tell you this. I can always tell when there is a new release out because Firefox starts crashing left and right within hours of being idle or opening 3 or 4 tabs/windows. I did go back and uninstalled version 12 of Flash and all I had installed was 14.. Do I don't know why it's showing 12 and 14. Also sometime in the last couple releases the RESTORE session went from listing all tabs/sessioons/windows that were previously open no matter how many I had to now only about 2 or 3 sessions/tabs/windows out of whatever I had opened.

Flash does not uninstall itself completely. You need to use the Uninstaller for Flash Player and then install the version you want. http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html as mentioned by jscher2000

As far as "other" web browsers. The 5 major web browsers for desktop / laptop devices are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera - in the order that Wikipedia reports usage statistics. There are many other browsers available that aren't used by enough people to merit their own category on usage charts and are listed as "other" on many or those charts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_%28Source_StatCounter%29.svg

Hi tforsberg, obviously Firefox behaves differently on your system(s) than on mine, even though we use the same OS.

Were you able to find any crash IDs?

To track down the extra Flash DLL, could you try the following: type or paste about:plugins in the address bar and press Enter. You can use Find (Ctrl+f) and search for npswf to find the Flash plugin(s) on the page. The default location is:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

Can you track down Flash 12 to that or a different location?

Regarding session restore, you get the best results when you exit Firefox using the menu. Either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• File menu > Exit

If you exit Firefox by closing windows individually, or by right-clicking Firefox on the task bar and choosing Close All Windows, you might not be able to recover more than 3 or 4 windows. You can increase the number of closed windows that can be restored by changing a setting:

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

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

(3) You can raise these values to store more closed window and closed tab history (which then can be restored from the History menu):

• browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo (number of closed windows remembered; default is 3)
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo (number of closed tabs remembered, per window; default is 10)