You must likely just had a crash, what you described is the normal behavior you see when Firefox crashes.

Open Firefox, type in about:crashes, and copy the crash id (it starts with bp-) here so I can look it up and see what actually caused your crash

Thanks for taking a look at this for me Tyler.

When I first checked the log for about:crashes earlier today I saw mine -- at least I presumed it was mine given the date and time for 12/18 at 7:48 am -- but it's oddly no longer there. Now the only listed ones for 12/18 are the following:

bp-3b9321a8-faa2-4756-a2c9-05d732121218 bp-ea9c231d-3c1a-48e4-8aba-393792121218 bp-8257e650-6241-419a-b15b-1eb3b2121218 bp-d9c88379-b2ad-427c-944a-957532121218 bp-5d8bfd59-1fa3-49aa-a94a-056132121218 bp-d6bddb40-0bff-4481-b312-411c52121218 bp-381b69a0-ead2-4300-a713-a58a92121218 bp-5e49e872-6e53-48c3-a4bb-8fe732121218 bp-23505ba0-3ac1-49c2-b85a-8fbb22121218 bp-cde9a350-6acd-4d96-89d1-cd1bc2121218 bp-0a3e4dc6-24ef-46ba-84f3-0c4b42121218 bp-5142274a-f130-4543-82a7-666dd2121218 bp-b1b0b671-51a6-4b49-803a-1cd6b2121218

I don't know if the following helps but in my file for AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports I have the following two submitted files.

One is named LastCrash and created on 12/18/2012 7:48 AM, and when I open it includes only the following: 1355834914

The second file is named submit and created on 12/18/2012 7:49 AM, and when I open it includes only the following: [12/18/12 07:49:27] Crash report submission failed: The operation completed successfully.

My concern is that my browser application which I opened at 7:06 AM was working fine with the tab I was viewing but that someone else may have hacked my system which caused the crash particularly since my security log shows additional Firefox Browsers opened at 7:49 AM.

Any insight that you can offer would be appreciated.

So all your crashing threads are empty, which means something corrupted them. (It wasn't a hacker, firefox.exe will close, then open crash reporter, then re-open firefox).

So, this is your best bet going forward: Make sure you are running Firefox 17.0.1, update all windows software (run Windows update multiple times), update your graphics card driver, scan for viruses using malwarebytes, and then reset Firefox. Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

Thanks so much for your help.

You do state that "It wasn't a hacker, firefox.exe will close, then open crash reporter, then re-open firefox." Isn't that precisely what happened according to my security log which shows that at 7:49 the following events were noted in this order: firefox.exe accessing the internet, crashreporter.exe accessing the internet, and then refox.exe accessing the internet? I don't know and defer to you but am just asking for a clarification.

Right after the crash I did update to Firefox 17.0.1, did a malwarebytes scan which was negative, and now I will reset Firefox.

Thanks again for all your help, and if you could just clarify the hacker question given the series of three Firefox events at 7:49 am I'd appreciate it.

Yes that's what I said, that wasn't a hacker, it was just normal operation of Firefox and the crash reporter, so you don't need to worry about it.

Do you mind if I bother you with a couple of more questions?

First, what are all those crash id files from today that I listed from about:crashes? They seemed like they contained complete data? Are they my crashes or someone elses because many of them contain comments and seem like they predate 12/18/12 even if they seemingly are tied to my Mozilla browser.

When you say something corrupted my crash threads as empty are you referring to the bp- reports I listed or the two files from AppData? If you're referring to the latter, is there usually a typical reason for their corruption?

(Thanks for your patience at my ignorance.)

The crash ID's you gave point to the actual dumps on our server, for example the first one, bp-3b9321a8-faa2-4756-a2c9-05d732121218, points to https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/3b9321a8-faa2-4756-a2c9-05d732121218, which as you can see is empty, meaning it doesn't show what actually caused Firefox to crash. The comments section includes comments from people with the same crash who also submitted the data to us. And yes, all the ID's you gave us are from your Firefox, they are basically every crash you've had in Firefox (unless you've cleared the crash history at some point).

Thanks so much for your time and help. I really appreciated it.

Hi Tyler.

If you wouldn't mind I have one more related question.

I noticed that the list under about:crashes had many instances going back several months. However, my default option under advanced settings is not to submit crash reports, and until this morning I never even noticed a crash. This morning was the first time I was ever asked with the pop-up window if I wanted to submit the crash report, and I clicked on submit to forward the appropriate information to get to the bottom of what happened.

However, I'm curious how all those others got submitted given my setting not to submit them, and I never clicked on a window to submit them. Indeed, I don't even recall ever experiencing a crash with Firefox, and so I was surprised to see so many crash reports associated with my browser.

Thanks for any insight.

Clarification: "I don't even recall ever experiencing a crash with Firefox"

. . . that is, until this morning