Hi jagman55, to always have a choice about crash recovery, turn off automatic crash recovery as follows:

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

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

(3) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference to display a small edit box and change from 1 to 0 (that's a zero) then click OK

With this change, Firefox won't even try one automatic crash recovery but will immediately show the page letting you select windows and tabs.

Success?

I am familiar with these changes but it did not seem to work. My Firefox is currently 69.0.3 (64-bit). Next 'boot' It restored automatically: here is a COPY of the command and it shows ZERO.

browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes; [modified] [integer] 0 My first Firefox was v1 many years ago. In the "ole" days, before "recovery", if we wanted Firefox to "recover" we could "end task" in TASK MANAGER and use "recently closed windows" . As I stated, I use this method to recover from Malware that LOCKS Firefox and "uncheck" the Malware URL [not recover], but with ZERO it still AUTO RECOVERS. Do I try something else?

Thanks for responding.

When you say "next boot" do you mean killing the Firefox process in Task Manager and restarting Firefox? Firefox definitely should not perform automatic crash recovery in that scenario with the setting we've discussed.

Could you confirm that you do not have Firefox set to restore your previous session automatically at startup (first checkbox on the Options page). That might be independent of the crash recovery settings.

You are correct. Missed that one. But, do you know if I UNCHECK that one, will it then NOT restore al all AND not let me do it manually and will give me the PAGE to choose the URLs I want to restore?

Sorry, I just TESTED that and it did work. I crashed it, brought up a new page and it asked me IF I wanted to restore.... and it did.

I wonder why Mozilla doesn't cleanup that procedure?

The ONLY way I know to get rid of malware that locks Firefox for ransom is to END TASK AND CRASH FIREFOX. When the RECOVERED PAGE comes up and asks if you want to restart, I UNCHECK the URL FOR THE MALWARE SITE, recover the rest. Works good.

Mozilla could make that a more formal recover to FIGHT THE RANSOM MALWARE unless you know of a better way to UNLOCK Firefox instead of paying the ransom.

Hi jagman55, the situation with "takeover" pages is a tough one. Unfortunately Firefox's phishing and malware protection is based on lists of bad sites. Because these scammers keep creating new sites, it is difficult for the feature to keep up.

There are a few common patterns to these annoying pages, and these are some techniques for closing them without having to take drastic measures.

The "key" (ha ha) is the keyboard shortcut for closing the current tab, which is Ctrl+w (or on Mac, Cmd+w). Try it after each action to see whether it is available yet.

(1) Large alert dialog (lots of text)

If you cancel this dialog, it may reappear. After two or three appearances, Firefox should add a checkbox at the bottom of the dialog to stop the site from showing more alerts. Check that box and click OK to block further dialogs.

(2) Authentication dialog (asks for username and password)

If you cancel this dialog, the page may reload and immediately show it again. Pressing the Esc key numerous times in a row can cancel the reload as well as the dialog.

(3) Reacting to mouse movement

Some pages have a script that detects when you are moving the mouse pointer up toward the tab bar and takes action to show another dialog, or moves to full screen view to hide the toolbar area. On these pages, the keyboard shortcut is essential.

Hopefully this will let you close problem pages without having to "kill" Firefox in the Windows Task Manager. (I don't recommend using that method because the tab will come back during automatic crash recovery anyway.)

Often these scam pages are promoted through ad networks. As a defensive measure, you could consider using an add-on that is effective at blocking ads, such as:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

As with any content blocker, this will cause problems on some sites, so keep an eye on its toolbar button in case you need to make an exception to get a page to load properly.