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Firefox does not respond when I click the Help menu and select Troubleshooting Information.

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I have a deeper problem with Firefox, which is that it doesn't respond at all when I type something in the address window and press return. Following some of the help pages, I am advised to try resetting Firefox by clicking on the help menu and selecting Troubleshooting Information, and then pressing Reset. However, nothing at all happens when I click on the help menu and select Troubleshooting Information. Also note that I tried restarting in "safe mode". I'm told that this can be done by selecting "Restart with add-ons disabled" also in the Help menu. However, this doesn't work either. I have to hold down "option" while starting Firefox. Does firefox not work with OSX 10.9?

I have a deeper problem with Firefox, which is that it doesn't respond at all when I type something in the address window and press return. Following some of the help pages, I am advised to try resetting Firefox by clicking on the help menu and selecting Troubleshooting Information, and then pressing Reset. However, nothing at all happens when I click on the help menu and select Troubleshooting Information. Also note that I tried restarting in "safe mode". I'm told that this can be done by selecting "Restart with add-ons disabled" also in the Help menu. However, this doesn't work either. I have to hold down "option" while starting Firefox. Does firefox not work with OSX 10.9?

All Replies (14)

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Holding down the option key should work to get the Safe Mode / Reset dialog. However, if Firefox is still running, you will just get a new window. You might need to force quit the program

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Holding down option key worked, but Safe Mode didn't do anything (didn't fix the problem) nor did Resetting. Firefox ignores everything I type in the address window. There is no way to use Firefox (it doesn't respond to anything other than bookmarks - which were imported from Safari).

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No other suggestions? That's unfortunate, because I'd like to use firefox. Does it just not work on some systems? Any ideas what might be wrong?

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Sorry, as a Windows user, I'm not handy with some Firefox issues on Mac.

Could you check cor-el's reply at the end of this thread and see whether that helps:

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Did you try to open a new window to see if it works there?


Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

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 the problem

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OK, when I create a new profile and start Firefox with it, it works perfectly... UNTIL I close Firefox and restart. What could be corrupting or causing the profile to stop working, simply by quitting Firefox and restarting??

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It happens without fail every single time I restart Firefox.

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Does it help if you start Firefox in Safe Mode by holding down the Shift/Options key?

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No, it doesn't help to start in safe mode. The only way to get it to work is by creating a new profile. However it only works once per newly created profile. The very next time I try to open Firefox - without fail - it opens but is completely unresponsive. Something is corrupting the profile every single time. Any ideas?

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Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that has effect.

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I'm not using a windows machine. What would the mac OS X 10.9.2 equivalent be, do you happen to know?

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Does anyone know what might be causing the profile to work once, and only once? Quitting Firefox and restarting hoses the profile so that it isn't useable anymore. Creating a completely new profile every time is obviously not a viable option. I need to find out what could be corrupting/changing/modifying the profile every single time I quit Firefox. Any ideas? And to repeat: starting in Safe Mode does nothing to solve my problem.

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The only thing that worked was downloading and installing the Beta version (29.0).

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Hi ptsii, it's possible this was a bug in Firefox 28 that is fixed in Firefox Beta (future Firefox 29). If the problem doesn't come back, you can mark your post as the solution for future reference.