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Firefox square with grey line stops it working

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  • 3 have this problem
  • 16 views
  • Last reply by N11ash13

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Hi have used Firefox successfully for long time now and 2 days ago decided to make the default home page yahoo . It has stopped working due to a square appearing on page with grey horizontal shaded line in . Nothing I can do with mouse as computer just beeps all the time . Cannot close Mozilla so have to restart my Acer laptop and have deleted Firefox and reinstalled and the same box appears meaning it's impossible to use ? Any help much appreciated thanks anita Ps did norton full scan and after 3 hours 999000 files no errors found !

Hi have used Firefox successfully for long time now and 2 days ago decided to make the default home page yahoo . It has stopped working due to a square appearing on page with grey horizontal shaded line in . Nothing I can do with mouse as computer just beeps all the time . Cannot close Mozilla so have to restart my Acer laptop and have deleted Firefox and reinstalled and the same box appears meaning it's impossible to use ? Any help much appreciated thanks anita Ps did norton full scan and after 3 hours 999000 files no errors found !

Chosen solution

Empty white box, gray bar, checkbox, question mark?

That irritating box has been linked to an AOL add-on. In order to remove the problem extension, you probably need to start Firefox in its Safe Mode so that it doesn't run.

I'm assuming this is on a Windows system -- if you use Mac or Linux these keyboard shortcuts probably won't work for you...

You'll have to shut down Firefox any way you can, for example:

  • Alt+F4
  • right-click its tile on the Taskbar > Close all windows
  • Task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)

To start Firefox in its Safe Mode, hold down the Shift key while double-clicking the shortcut.

A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

Then you can go to the Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then on the right, look for AOL.

Any luck?

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Chosen Solution

Empty white box, gray bar, checkbox, question mark?

That irritating box has been linked to an AOL add-on. In order to remove the problem extension, you probably need to start Firefox in its Safe Mode so that it doesn't run.

I'm assuming this is on a Windows system -- if you use Mac or Linux these keyboard shortcuts probably won't work for you...

You'll have to shut down Firefox any way you can, for example:

  • Alt+F4
  • right-click its tile on the Taskbar > Close all windows
  • Task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)

To start Firefox in its Safe Mode, hold down the Shift key while double-clicking the shortcut.

A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

Then you can go to the Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then on the right, look for AOL.

Any luck?

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Yes thanks so much worked straight away :)))))