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Google search bar on top of firefox browser not working

  • 3 replies
  • 26 have this problem
  • 13 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Google search bar on top of firefox browser not working.

When I try to search something using that google bar, all it says to me is "connecting".

But when I try to search using a different search engine like Yahoo!, it is fine.

Google search bar on top of firefox browser not working. When I try to search something using that google bar, all it says to me is "connecting". But when I try to search using a different search engine like Yahoo!, it is fine.

All Replies (3)

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window.

Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

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I still have the problem..

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Try to delete the search.json file and possible search-metadata.json and search.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder to reset the search engines to the default.

Firefox will rebuild the search.json file from the default search engines in the "browser\searchplugins" folder in the Firefox program folder and the searchplugins folder in the Firefox profile folder.


Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.