HI cjripper,

Unfortunately Windows XP has stopped being supported by Microsoft. In the meantime you can still update Firefox from the About Firefox menu under the Question Mark icon from the three bar menu.

To troubleshoot the automatic updates on XP are System Properties > Automatic Updates - Automatic, Dowload, Notify or Turn off are the options.

cjripper said

My Firefox program is set to inform me of updates, but it has updated without informing me at least twice now. ...

I suspect that you just missed seeing the message informing you about the update those two times. Which happened to me too, back when the automatic update system first came out. It took me almost 20 updates to figure out what and why it was happening. I was testing development versions at that time - a new update came every day, so it was like a year's worth of updates each week.

When Firefox is launched for the first time each day it will check for an update 120 seconds after it opens; if it finds an update Firefox will open an update dialog window to notify the user - when "Check for updates, but let me decide whether to install them" was selected by the user. If the default setting "Automatically install updates..." is being used, there is no update message - the update is installed and the user is told to restart Firefox.

That update dialog window times out very quickly while waiting for the user to respond - like in 5 to 10 seconds, as I recall - and if the user doesn't respond, that update will proceed without waiting any longer.

And if the user happens to be typing or "clicking" at the time the update dialog window appears, that dialog may end up behind the main browser window and won't be seen by the user.

the-edmeister said

cjripper said

My Firefox program is set to inform me of updates, but it has updated without informing me at least twice now. ...

I suspect that you just missed seeing the message informing you about the update those two times. Which happened to me too, back when the automatic update system first came out. It took me almost 20 updates to figure out what and why it was happening. I was testing development versions at that time - a new update came every day, so it was like a year's worth of updates each week.

When Firefox is launched for the first time each day it will check for an update 120 seconds after it opens; if it finds an update Firefox will open an update dialog window to notify the user - when "Check for updates, but let me decide whether to install them" was selected by the user. If the default setting "Automatically install updates..." is being used, there is no update message - the update is installed and the user is told to restart Firefox.

That update dialog window times out very quickly while waiting for the user to respond - like in 5 to 10 seconds, as I recall - and if the user doesn't respond, that update will proceed without waiting any longer.

And if the user happens to be typing or "clicking" at the time the update dialog window appears, that dialog may end up behind the main browser window and won't be seen by the user.

This seems more likely. It takes longer than that for the firefox window to show up, so it makes sense that the "New update" window is never seen. Is there a way to have that update notification to not auto-initiate, or at least last long enough for me to actually see it?

There is a hidden preference in about:config - that I think might be what might work. Never used that pref myself, so I'm not a 100% sure that this is the correct pref.

app.update.timerMinimumDelay the default setting is 120 seconds

I don't know what the upper limit of that pref may be, but I would try 300 seconds to get 5 minutes before Firefox checks for updates.

But, you still need to see the update dialog window or keep an eye on the Windows Task Bar for the appearance of another Firefox window when you only see the main browser window. That was my "tip-off" to what was going on - a fleeting appearance of a second window bar in the Task Bar.