While using a major company's website, it and Firefox froze. I cannot do anything on it including close it to try to reinstall it.
The above says it all. I was on my financial advisors website and it stopped responding. It does not respond to anything I click on it. I have one other tab open but I cannot click on it. I cannot "x" out either the tab or the website. I went to uninstall Firefox but it said I first had to close it. I can't. It doesn't "x"out.
All Replies (3)
Not sure why you wish to uninstall Firefox, but that is not going to solve the problem if that is what you thought.
You seem to be using Google Chrome at the moment. Does that work ok with your Financial site ?
As the site presumably requires a login and you do not even say what the site is I doubt there is much we can do to help you with that.
Does Firefox work ok on other sites ? I presume you do have Firefox working again, if not then does it work next time you power down and power up the computer again ?
Google Chrome works ok and power off-power on did not help. The website was RBC Wealth Management and the other tab was Yahoo/finance. Both are frozen. I did think that uninstall/reinstall would help. What now? Thanx Bob
I am not certain what locked up your Firefox so try these in order; until, hopefully, you get Firefox working. Then post back again.
A Refresh should solve the problem, (unless say malware has attacked the main Firefox files) and not require additional work afterwards to get Firefox back to normal other than reinstalling addons.
That needs you to be able to open Firefox and a new tab or window. Try for instance Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T from your locked Firefox. If that works you should be able to open the article linked above, and use its Refresh button. Otherwise it is a bit more tricky to do something similar.
If that fails then shutdown/kill Firefox and try to open using a Windows Run command. Use keyboard shortcut and type or paste
firefox.exe -safe-mode "www.support.mozilla.org"
then press the Enter key does that open Firefox ? (Note there is a space between exe & -safe) That should also change focus and open a new tab. It is possible that may just be enough to unlock it.
If not then try
firefox.exe -CreateProfile 2016default
That should create a new profile. Followed by
firefox.exe -P "2016default
That should use the profile manager (possibly without you seeing it) and then open Firefox using that new profile. Check that works and is not frozen. See also
- Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments
- Recovering important data from an old profile
After you have a working Firefox you need to set up a shortcut for it or at least make the existing shortcut work. If you open the profile manager using the -P option note you have the ability to select the profile you use and select the profile it will open with in future.
Do not delete the old profile. If you used the Refresh button you should have retained bookmarks and passwords etc.
However if you used one of the Run methods you will have data unavailable. Please follow the instructions in the article about recovering data, I imagine you will have bookmarks and logins that you will wish to recover from the old profile and put in the new profile. You probably should not attempt to transfer the open tabs as that will likely lock up Firefox again.
If you have a lot of important tabs you need recovering say so. There may be methods of getting them back without locking up Firefox.
Note a standard reinstall would leave the profile as it was and that is almost certainly where the problem lies. On the other hand if it is a problem with the program files the standard uninstall may not solve that either. You may require what we refer to as a clean reinstall. If the problem is malware none of these methods may work, but let's not complicate matters further & consider that at this stage.