Comments on: Firefox Frozen

Question: Firefox Frozen

crapples — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 06:56:40 -0800

Computer geniuses of all stripes: What the heck happened?? I hit the back button in Firefox, using OSX 10.4.11, and I got this page!. I can't force quit Firefox, I can't shut down the computer (it times out), and I can't access the window that's behind the one shown in the picture!! Of course I could 'hard' reset the computer - but my questions are these....

1 - Is there any way to get Firefox to close that I haven't thought of so I can avoid a hard reset?

2 - Why on earth did this happen?

Thanks for your help.

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:02:37 -0800

1. Easiest and fastest: open a Terminal window and type: killall -9 firefox-bin

2. Firefox, in my experience, often has odd lockup issues.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:04:13 -0800

You may or may not need to put a sudo in front of the `killall -9 firefox-bin` ... but yes, that should solve it.

If you do that and it doesn't work, just go ahead and hard-reset the computer, that means that the process has gone zombie and nothing will kill it.

By: crapples

crapples — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:10:45 -0800

That did it! Thanks so much for your help. I'd rather avoid hard-resets if possible. Thanks again.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:48:32 -0800

You don't even need to hit the terminal, usually. Either select 'Force Quit' from the Apple menu or hit Command-Option-Esc. Select Firefox from the list.

By: IronSurfer

IronSurfer — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:13:44 -0800

From the looks of it, that is not a page but rather a very long error message. Firefox blindly puts the error message in a dialog, on OSX these are the "Sheets" that drop down. In this case the message is so long there is no place for the OK button. Although you've resolved it I bet clicking on the message and hitting [enter] would have closed it.

By: ckolderup

ckolderup — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:23:51 -0800

nathan_teske: The OP said Firefox won't force quit.

crapples, if you have trouble remembering the Terminal method, you can usually open up the Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities), highlight firefox, and press the "Quit Process" button at the top. I'm pretty sure that is doing something similar to kill (or is at least more forceful than force quit).

By: General Zubon

General Zubon — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:52:58 -0800

Instructions on how to create an Automator action that will restart Firefox HERE. This is a nifty tip that has bailed me out of a few situations like the one you've described.

By: advicepig

advicepig — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:47:24 -0800

Often, when you can't force quit an application by the command option shift escape combo, you can command tab to switch to another application, then you can choose force quit from the apple menu and close the offending program.

By: tepidmonkey

tepidmonkey — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:40:44 -0800

Seconding hitting the Return key if this happens again. It looks like an error message that's so big it's hiding the OK and Cancel buttons.