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Unless I'm in safe-mode, Firefox will not let me type more than one letter.

  • 1 reply
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

dyscox
dyscox
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I just received a new hard drive yesterday for my Inspirion N5110 (Windows 7). Firefox worked okay shortly, but has since begun to freeze after I type one or two letters. So if I type "nytimes.com" only the n appears. However, Firefox IS registering that I'm typing them, just not showing it. The same principal applies when I click on options. It will open me to the current tab (general) but let me go no further. But if I click on, say, advanced in the options it will open to the advanced AFTER I close it and reopen options, and the problem still persists, only this time on the advanced tab. Reinstalling Firefox has not changed anything, only safe-mode works. Disabling plug-ins has not helped either.

I just received a new hard drive yesterday for my Inspirion N5110 (Windows 7). Firefox worked okay shortly, but has since begun to freeze after I type one or two letters. So if I type "nytimes.com" only the n appears. However, Firefox IS registering that I'm typing them, just not showing it. The same principal applies when I click on options. It will open me to the current tab (general) but let me go no further. But if I click on, say, advanced in the options it will open to the advanced AFTER I close it and reopen options, and the problem still persists, only this time on the advanced tab. Reinstalling Firefox has not changed anything, only safe-mode works. Disabling plug-ins has not helped either.

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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If it does work in Safe-mode then disable all extensions and then try to find which is causing it by enabling one at a time until the problem reappears.

  • Use "Disable all add-ons" on the Safe mode start window to disable all extensions.
  • Close and restart Firefox after each change via "File > Exit" (Mac: "Firefox > Quit"; Linux: "File > Quit")

In Firefox 4 and later Safe mode disables extensions and disables hardware acceleration.

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

A possible cause is a problem with the file places.sqlite that stores the bookmarks and the history.

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

See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":

There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.

If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

See: