Problem with Firefox

[BlueDiamond]

Anyone have any idea why I am suddenly unable to open Firefox? I'm not doing anything different ... switch on computer, let it do all its start-up stuff, open Thunderbird to check emails, then try to open Firefox ... and it keeps giving me a "timed out" message. Nothing has been changed on the computer (I am the sole user) and nothing else seems to be affected. Help.

[rotorcraig]

There was an auto-install update published earlier this week.

Surely that hasn't trashed your installation ... only M$ updates do that? :}

RC

[Jhieminga]

I sometimes cannot restart Firefox after having used and closed it. What happens is that somehow FF won't close completely, leaving the process running in the background. The fix is to press Ctrl-Alt-Del, to open the task manager, go to 'processes' tab and see if 'firefox.exe' is listed there. When that is the case, select it and press 'end process'. You will get a warning, choose to end the process anyway. After this I can then open FF again.

I don't know if this will fix your problem, as it happens on startup, but it's worth a try I guess. Otherwise I can only suggest a reinstall. If you do that, try to back up your profile folder before you do!

[BlueDiamond]

Surely that hasn't trashed your installation ... only M$ updates do that? Don't I know it!! No, everything is there ... bookmarks etc. it just doesn't seem to actually start.

... try to back up your profile folder before you do!What is a profile folder and how do I back it up please? I tried the ctrl/alt/del thing but it shows me that Firefox is not running, so that's not the prob.

UPDATE ...
Okay ... all sorted.

It occurred to me that programmes like Firefox often get updates as a matter of routine, so I thought maybe one of these updates was "disagreeing" with my firewall. I uninstalled the firewall AND Firefox then re-installed Firefox which then worked fine (without the firewall). I then re-installed the firewall AFTER Firefox and everything is now okay. We'll see if it stays that way! Thanks for your help though ... much appreciated.

[Jhieminga]

Good to hear you got it sorted! For future reference regarding profile folders: http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

[shack]

Having been a long time Firefox user I changed last week to Firefox 2 and since then have had many "lock ups" with it, something that I have not experienced with previous versions. I get "Firefox not responding" messages, close it and restart to be asked if I wish to continue with the previous opening or do I wish to restart a new version.

Anyone else having trouble?

[Mercenary Pilot]

Looks like a few of us are having some issues. (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=251985)

[shack]

Thanks for the link. I've been away and "Search" did not appear to be working too well.