My fox's ass is on Fire

August 8, 2006 3:30 PM

Firefox crashes whenever I want to download/save file, or open Extensions or Options dialog box.

Running Firefox 1.5.0.2 on WinXP.

It was running stable without any issues, until I don't know what changes knowingly or unknowingly I made to it. Now it crashes every single time time it has to open a new window such as saveAs dialog box(after clicking "save", if I "cancel" the saveAs box, that doesn't hurt) or opening the Tools-->Options or Tools-->Extensions dialog box. However I can open the Help->About box, just to show that not all dialog box's crash. I've lived with it long enough and now I am just absolutely frustrated that I can't change any settings and everytime I have to download something, I have to open it in IE using IEView extension.

The only thing I recollect doing was, there were some Firefox speeding up tips doing the rounds a few months back -- probably frm some Mozilla team member, something to do with some config settings in about:config to reduce mem. usage -- that's the only thing I did. But I don't remember if the crashes started happening immediately after making that change.

The problem really started on 1.5.0.1, I guess (or could be 1.5.0.0 - I don't remember my exact version of previous installation), and I've reinstalled the latest 1.5.0.2 and the crashes still continue, which leads me to believe there's something stale remaining from the prevs version.

Other than this all other functions, features work just fine.

FYI: I don't use any greasemonkey scripts, but I do use some extensions like BugMeNot, IEView and some extension which allows you to download embedded content, probably a few more I don't even remember (sorry I can't even look up all my extensions).

posted by forwebsites to computers & internet (6 comments total)

My first suggestion is to upgrade to the latest version, 1.5.0.6.

If this doesn't fix it, try creating a new profile. To do this, open up the profile manager (should be one of the options in firefox's start menu folder), and click create profile. If this fixes it, then something has gone wrong with your original profile, and it would be best to carry on using your new one.
posted by spark at 4:00 PM on August 8, 2006

Consider getting the current version (1.5.0.6)

Create a new profile -- probably something in your current user info is insane.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:02 PM on August 8, 2006

Have you tried the basics of unloading all your extensions and seeing if that stops FireFox from crashing? If that doesn't work you could try deleting your preference files.
posted by onalark at 4:23 PM on August 8, 2006

spark, Zed_Lopez: Thanks guys, this is why MeFi is so awesome. I was a fool to have lived with this problem for more than a month now. Created new profile on 1.5.0.2 and it worked. I backed up my earlier default profile. Now should I update to v1.5.0.6 on top of the new profile and then restore my earlier profile or the other way round? Zed, for whatever reason MeFi not allowing your answer to be marked as best along with spark

onalark: I cannot even open my Extensions dialog box, without crashing Ffox, which I presume is required to unload them. Any other way to unload extensions?
posted by forwebsites at 4:30 PM on August 8, 2006

If you start Firefox in safe (no extensions) mode (which, once again, you should find an option for under the Start menu) it will allow you to uninstall extensions without first having loaded any.

Since extensions are generally installed in your profile, though, if you're running with a new profile, you've got rid of them all anyway.

The only change a Firefox version upgrade will make to an existing profile is to auto-search for compatibility upgrades to installed extensions. If you've got extensions installed that break Firefox, it's best not to let this happen; first get your existing version running with a clean profile, then upgrade to the current version, then reinstall the extensions you want.

If you make a backup of your profile folder before making any settings changes that you think might break Firefox, you can easily unwind them just by exiting Firefox, deleting your current profile folder, and restoring it from the backup before restarting Firefox. Once you've got Firefox set up the way you want, it's a good idea to do this backup before trying out anything weird and/or new.
posted by flabdablet at 7:10 PM on August 8, 2006

Thanks flabdablet.
posted by forwebsites at 9:30 AM on August 9, 2006