Firefox will not start without Administrator permission
Firefox has worked fine for years. A few days ago Firefox wouldn't start from its Desktop icon or by directly double clicking its .exe file. There is a very brief response lasting about 0.3 second then nothing. If I start it by right clicking the icon and starting it as Administrator and then clicking on the UAC notice to clear it, it runs perfectly. I have temporarily set it to start in Administrator mode but clearing the UAC notice is irritating. Furthermore, it does worry me what else may be wrong with my PC/Firefox.
Thanks John Middleton.
Chosen solution
I have to confess that my problem has mysteriously gone away. I thought I would try seeing whether Firefox would start in Safe mode so I right clicked on the Firefox Cone icon and right clicked on the 'Mozilla Firefox' and then 'Properties' and 'Advanced', removed the tick against 'Run as administrator' then clicked 'OK', 'Apply' and 'OK'. I tried it again by left clicking the icon just in case and to my amazement it worked normally!
I have no idea why this happened but will update this site if it ever happens again.
John M
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Try to do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before (re)installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.
- Download the Firefox installer and save the file to the desktop
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/
If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows registry and settings in security software.
- Do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall your current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including data in profiles created by other Firefox versions.
Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.
- (32 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
- (64 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"
- It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_Firefox
Your personal data like bookmarks is stored in the Firefox profile folder, so you won't lose personal data when you uninstall and (re)install or update Firefox, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.
Thank you for such a rapid reply but I was hoping you might be able to suggest likely reasons for what may have happened and checks that I can make to see if all the tick boxes required to make it run are ticked.
On the Mozilla Firefox Home Page I am greeted with the statement 'Congrats! You’re using the latest version of Firefox. Give Firefox a tune up. Learn more' with a button to press marked 'Refresh Firefox'.
Reading the 'Learn more' link, this button seems to achieve all what you suggested automatically. I was not keen to try it in case I had a job replacing the Add-ons and Extensions.
That's why I was hoping somebody may have had such a failure out of the blue and had been able to resolve what had caused it.
For the record it is the 43.0.4. version of Firefox running in a Windows 7 Professional operating system with Service Pack 1.
Thanks again for your help.
John M.
This can possibly be a problem with file or registry permissions where not all users have the proper read/write permissions or something else might be wrong.
You can try to boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode and run Firefox once as administrator to see if that helps in case your security software is causing problems.
Chosen Solution
I have to confess that my problem has mysteriously gone away. I thought I would try seeing whether Firefox would start in Safe mode so I right clicked on the Firefox Cone icon and right clicked on the 'Mozilla Firefox' and then 'Properties' and 'Advanced', removed the tick against 'Run as administrator' then clicked 'OK', 'Apply' and 'OK'. I tried it again by left clicking the icon just in case and to my amazement it worked normally!
I have no idea why this happened but will update this site if it ever happens again.
John M
That was very good work. Well Done.