Firefox Community Forum

My Firefox suddenly seems to be behaving abdurptly. The icon of the taskbar for firefox is also lost, and it was hard to open. I just updated my windows and I observe this effect. What oculd have gone wrong? What data would you need to get to root cause of this?

Long story short (as possible):

Windows 11 Home, Firefox version 135.0, File version 18.5.0.0, Product version 18.05

Opened Firefox first thing as soon as PC was turned on today. Immediately prompted for an update. It's Mozilla/Firefox. I didn't question it. I did the update and it asked me to download a file. "I trust Mozilla. OK". It downloaded a Firefox Installer.exe file. The same as the one I installed back in 2022 when I set up this PC. I noticed it was a duplicate because (1) followed the file name. "Odd, but okay...it's Mozilla/Firefox. I trust it"

Then I tried to use Firefox and no matter what website I tried to go to I got a "Gah. Your tab just crashed" on the page. It had "Restore crashed tabs" options but nothing worked. All led back to "Gah. Your tabs..." Thinking about the same Installer.exe file and its (1), I checked the Firefox update history. Nothing for today. I then opened the Properties of the original 2022 Installer.exe and the one today. All were the same except 1) - the 2022 file is 325KB and the (1) file from today is 364KB, and 2) - under Digital Signatures, the Digest algorithm is "sha1" in the 2022 file and "sha256" in the (2) file from today.

I didn't know this Ask a question/forum was here or I would have inquired here first. Instead I turned to Reddit's Firefox group using my phone before I did anything on my PC. I spec'd out the details of the day and was assured by two people to do a restart of Firefox. So I did. Yup, that seemed to fix the issue. And off I went with the stuff I'd originally had in store for my day. Until I had different/unrelated need to view my Downloads and I see a FireFox Installer(2) that must have crept in when I did the restart. There was no notification/prompt or request to allow. It just showed up and I wouldn't have known about it unless I checked my Downloads folder.

Until someone tells me otherwise, I'm staying off Firefox. Two .exe Installer files downloaded for a simple update? One which I authorized/allowed but the other sneaking in when I restarted Firefox? Not to mention the tabs not loading until I did the restart which if legit needed, Firefox didn't prompt me to do? That doesn't sound like normal Mozilla/Firefox behaviour. None of today's events do.

So...is this fishy like I think it is? Fishy or not, what's the best thing to do? I'm okay with computers but DEFINITELY NOT an expert. Hence me being here and asking what to do. Guidance needed. Help?

I wrote out the OS details and specs of the browser. I think that's all that anyone would need but if I'm wrong, don't hesitate to ask for more.

Thanks folks.

Err:15 https://example.com/apt stable Release

 404  Not Found [IP: 2600:1406:3a00:21::173e:2e65 443]

Hit:16 http://mirrors.cqu.edu.cn/ubuntu noble-security InRelease Reading package lists... Done W: http://http.kali.org/kali/dists/kali-rolling/InRelease: Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section in apt-key(8) for details. E: The repository 'https://example.com/apt stable Release' does not have a Release file. N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default. N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

I don't even have limited access to my internet because of this, so I cannot access the "future dates" to rename them as something perhaps botanical. In addition I am snowed in with late winter storms. My commputer is a Windows 7 Dell, (i.e. rather vintage) which I have always found fully adequate until now, and the problem is NOT with the computer.

Unable to connect to my email account on Firefox. Enter Yahoo/ATT mail and receive a message Oops, something went wrong. Try again later but this has been over a week. I can use the Microsoft Edge to get my emails but I do not want to go between different browsers for my personal emails and business emails.

Hello, my Firefox will not run no matter what I try.

I originally installed Firefox from the Microsoft Store and it worked perfectly for about a week. Then it stopped opening. When attempting to run the app, a loading cursor briefly appears and nothing happens. It is not visible in task manager processes.

Uninstalled and reinstalled several times - no luck.

Installed Firefox directly from website - still doesn't run, but it does pop up with a "crash report" window.

Can anybody help me out?

I was on FF ESR with manual update - setting = "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" I'm on Windows 10 Prof 64bit

On 3 Feb 25 I upgraded to 128.6.0 by downloading Firefox Setup 128.6.0esr 64bit.exe and installing in F:\Firefox (as usual)

Today, (9 Feb 25) I noticed the FF icon in the Task Bar was blank, so I went to F:\Firefox\firefox.exe and reinstated it. I just happened to go to Settings > Apps and noticed I had 2 FF installed:

128.6.0 installed 3 Feb 25 and 128.7.0 installed 9 Feb 25. My FF About says 128.7.0 is installed and F:\Firefox\firefox.exe is dated 8 Feb 25

Unfortunately there seem no way to see where the source is located for these 2 app entries. A search of C: did not find firefox.exe

So why has FF undated today when it is on manual update?

MAYBE I accidentally clicked update to one of the periodic prompts in the top right corner. If so, surely it should not create another entry in the Windows Apps settings

And is it safe to remove one of these, presumably the earlier one, or will that remove both as they seem to share the same folder F:\Firefox\

Thanks for reading Alan