Hi labrieleona, are these scam pages? First, you could try using the Windows Taskbar icon, if you can see the Taskbar:

• right-click the Firefox icon > Open new window -- it's useful to have a "good" window open before closing the bad window if possible
• hover the Firefox icon, position your mouse over the unwanted window, right-click > Close

Will it close or do you need to respond to some prompt in the page?

There are a few common patterns to these annoying pages, and these are some techniques for closing them without having to take drastic measures.

The "key" (ha ha) is the keyboard shortcut for closing the current tab, which is Ctrl+w (or on Mac, Cmd+w). Try it after each action to see whether it is available yet.

(1) Large alert dialog (lots of text)

If you cancel this dialog, it may reappear. After two or three appearances, Firefox should add a checkbox at the bottom of the dialog to stop the site from showing more alerts. Check that box and click OK to block further dialogs.

(2) Authentication dialog (asks for username and password)

If you cancel this dialog, the page may reload and immediately show it again. Pressing the Esc key numerous times in a row can cancel the reload as well as the dialog.

(3) Reacting to mouse movement

Some pages have a script that detects when you are moving the mouse pointer up toward the tab bar and takes action to show another dialog, or moves to full screen view to hide the toolbar area. On these pages, the keyboard shortcut is essential.

Hopefully this will let you close problem pages without having to "kill" Firefox in the Windows Task Manager. (I don't recommend using that method because the tab will come back during automatic crash recovery anyway.)

Often these scam pages are promoted through ad networks. As a defensive measure, you could consider using an add-on that is effective at blocking ads, such as:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

As with any content blocker, this will cause problems on some sites, so keep an eye on its toolbar button in case you need to make an exception to get a page to load properly.

A way out of a trap page is to (force it if needed) Close Firefox. Wait about 20 seconds for Firefox to finish closing. Right-click on the Firefox icon and select Open New Window. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Sometimes this works. If it opens, close it by Menu > File > Exit. This will flush out that web page from the Session Store.

Fred, you solved the problem!!!! Thank you for responding - yours was the first I read.

To the 2,000+ people that responded - Thank you very much for responding. I will do this to the community again when I have a problem!!! I really appreciate all.

Glad to help. Safe Surfing.

Go to the Mozilla Add-ons Web Page {web Link} (There’s a lot of good stuff here) and search for a good ad blocker.