hi, could you give us more information about the affected system - which security software are you using? if you type about:crashes into the address bar, are there any recently submitted crash reports in the "submitted" reports section - if so please copy and paste them here into a reply.

also go to the firefox menu ≡ > help ? > troubleshooting information, copy the contents of that page and paste them here into a reply on the forum? this might give us a clue what is going on...

thank you!

Hi Phillip, Thanks for getting back to me so fast. I am running AVG standard security software. Last submitted report was on the AppData\Local

Removed by waime

does it make any difference when you try this in order to switch off the multi-process mode in firefox?: enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2. double-click it and change its value to false and restart the browser.

if not any difference when you temporarily disable or uninstall your AVG security program?

Hi again Phillip, I tried both, i.e change the preference to false, and un-installed my AVG, but neither action made any difference to either of my problems I fear.

thanks a lot for following up. more troubleshooting if you're up for it: enter about:support into the address bar and in there click the button to open your profile folder. in there you'll find a file called places.sqlite which is the database that holds your bookmarks & history. please (while firefox is closed) try to rename it any other files whose names starts with places.sqlite to something like oldplaces.sqlite and start firefox again. is it possible to restore the backups now & can you navigate to other sites as well afterwards?

So, I renamed the file as instructed, but that has not changed the problems. Just to add to complexity of it all, I have found that I can get my opening homepage to change to a different website if I type an address into the address bar and hit enter. But it only works the once, it will not accept another address after that nor will any new tab work, not even the once.

any difference when you hit windows-key + R and open: %localappdata% and in the window that opos up delete the folder called "Mozilla" (this will clear the whole cache folder of firefox)?

I fear still no go. Phillip, many thanks for all your ideas and suggestions. I guess it is time for me to run into the arms of the great God google and use their chrome. Yuk!

next to the security software already in place, can you please also run a scan with various other security tools like the free version of malwarebytes, adwcleaner & eset online one-time scanner.

Ok, tried the adwcleaner and eset, and they both came up with files they identified as needing cleaning, one of which was in the Mozilla/Firefox folder, but this still has not resolved my problems. Again, many thanks for all your ideas and suggestions, but I think we have both spent enough time trying to solve these issues. I will return to Firefox from time to time to see if any updates that install make a difference. Cheers

Try to create a new profile to test if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Hey Cor-el, I gave this idea a whirl, but it didn't make the problems go away either. Thanks for your suggestion though

What files did you copy to the new profile?

Best would be in this case to skip copying places.sqlite and instead of restore the bookmarks from a compressed .jsonlz4 backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

If the Places Maintenance extension can't repair the places.sqlite database then remove all places.sqlite file(s) in the Firefox profile folder to make Firefox rebuild the places.sqlite database from the most recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

• keep a backup copy of places.sqlite in case a new places.sqlite database has to be created
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_process_the_backup_file_-_Firefox
• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
  Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

I didn't copy any of the files over to the new profile before I tested to see if the newly created profile would resolve the problem. I have also saved the files from the old profile elsewhere completely out of Firefox, and then deleted all the files from the old profile in an effort to try and resolve my problems. So I have been been trying out Firefox with the new profile and no old files in it or the old profile. This as not helped fix my problem

I see that there has been 6 others who have had this problem too. Have any of you had any success fixing your problems with the suggestion made in this forum?

currently, downgrading to firefox 54 from https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/54.0.1/win64/ seems the only remedy.

Thanks Phillip. V54.01 is working fine. I have stopped the auto updates, although don't want to leave too long as it might make me vulnerable. I have to say I am glad that I've got it working again as I though I was not seeing something obvious. For those looking to download V 54 to fix your V 55 problem, Phillips link didn't work for me, so just google version 54 and download from a third party download website, if you try using Mozilla site it will fire V 55 back again I appreciate all the help guys. Ta

thanks for the feedback. we'll depend on the help of affected users to further diagnose and troubleshoot the problem - if you'd be willing to help, please let me know!

I don't know how helpful I would be to you guys as I am not super literate I.T wise, but happy to help if I can. Thanks again