Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

After Upgrade to Firefox 10 on WinXP, it crashed on most of sites (youtube.com but even mozilla's extension's site). The Firefox 11beta has the same problems. Not even crash reports are created! I downgraded to Firefox 9.0.1 and it works.

  • 25 replies
  • 73 have this problem
  • 36 views
  • Last reply by AliceWyman

more options

Firefox 10 and 11beta are crashing instantly while trying to load a majority of sites such as newspapers, youtube.com etc. I could not track it down to a particular pattern, but the presence of videos on the sites was a facilitating factor. It even crashed on the Mozilla Extensions website. I tried all the described steps, starting in safe mode, disabling all plugins and all extensions but it did not work. I re-installed Firefox 9.0.1 and it works. No crash reports were generated. I do not have any of the applications mentioned to interfere with Firefox either. I have a solution for now after the downgrade, so it's not urgent for me - but would like to let you know that this is a real issue.

Firefox 10 and 11beta are crashing instantly while trying to load a majority of sites such as newspapers, youtube.com etc. I could not track it down to a particular pattern, but the presence of videos on the sites was a facilitating factor. It even crashed on the Mozilla Extensions website. I tried all the described steps, starting in safe mode, disabling all plugins and all extensions but it did not work. I re-installed Firefox 9.0.1 and it works. No crash reports were generated. I do not have any of the applications mentioned to interfere with Firefox either. I have a solution for now after the downgrade, so it's not urgent for me - but would like to let you know that this is a real issue.

All Replies (5)

more options

Hi, I have updated to FF 10.0.2 and did a clean re-install (deleted manually the mozilla folders as cor-el mentioned, including a fresh profile). The pattern does not change at all: it still crashes. It crashes very quickly and completely (not even crash reports are generated).

Interesting: if I disable ALL plugins, it would still load a page with embedded videos from youtube, and I can even play them using HTML5. The issue seem to be the Flash ads that most sites use. If I stop loading a page before the ads are loaded, it works. The size of the ad seems to also have an influence - it does not always cause an imediate crash, just most of the times and always after re-loading the same page with the same ad.


The problem seems however not to be with the Flash plug-in itself, but must be something caused by FF's rendering engine - it crashes even if I completely uninstall Flash. That would also explain why FF 9.0.1, Chrome, IE etc. run perfectly fine.


I checked for malware and the PC is clean, the Firewall is disabled (I have a firewall on my modem/router), i de-installed the virus scanner as well, it's not related to security stuff. The other problem I have on my laptop from work (W7) still persists after the upgrade to 10.0.2 (the proxy returns "bad request" for every POST to an HTTPS URL, but not for a GET - it's very annoying at the moment working with FF 10, I will file another issue related to that when I have time).


I am Netscape user since Netscape 2.01 :-) - I really want to stick to Mozilla.

Modified by ftibi

more options

Try Flash Block to block the Flash files.

more options

I still think you should restart the computer in Windows Safe Mode with Networking and then try running Firefox 10.0.2. If Firefox no longer crashes in Windows Safe Mode that would point to other software that runs in the background in Windows normal mode that is not compatible with Firefox 10.

In any case, you could also try the "AdBlock Plus" adblocker extension as a workaround.

more options

Many of us cannot move from XP to another operating system version, because we are in a corporate environment. XP is still a standard for a good percentage of Windows PCs. The fact is Firefox 10 doesn't work no matter what you do to tweak the plug-ins or add-ons. Running in safe mode doesn't help. Creating a new profile has no effect. This latest upgrade has caused me to move to Chrome, which I don't like as well. If someone could give me a link to download FF v9, I would greatly appreciate it--otherwise I'll have to just quit using it. Releasing this update was a major faux pas!

Modified by gregth2

more options

gregth2, You would get better help if you asked a new question but ... If Firefox 10 crashes in both Windows Safe Mode and Firefox Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode , nothing in this thread helped you and you want to downgrade to a previous version of Firefox, see

  1. 1
  2. 2