You don't want 17.0.2esr as that's the one that's issued to organisations. esr means extended support release. For personal use, which I guess you want. Click on 17.0.1, which is the last release of 17 before 18.Click on Win32 for windows. Go down the list for the release for your territory.

I asssume you're in an English speaking territory, so en-GB for the UK, en-US for the US, or en-ZA for South Africa.

Then click on Firefox 17.0.1.exe and choose to save the file to your directory of choice.

Next in Firefox go to Help/Trouble Shooting Information.

In the page that opens in your browser, look down the list to Application Basics, and Profile Folder. Click Button that says Show Folder.This will open an Explorer window with your profile folder open. You will want to back this folder up. Just copy it to a safe temporary directory. If all goes well, you won't even need this.

Close Firefox.

Choose to uninstall it from Windows Control Panel and uninstall programs. You will be given an option to delete your profile and personal data with a check box. Do NOT check this box. Uninstall Firefox 18.

Go to where you saved Firefox 17.0.1 and double click on it to install it.You want it to install in the same directory as previously. If you did the standard installation before, just do so again. As soon as it starts click on Tools/Options.

In the Advanced Tab, you want to click on Update. In the list, make sure you choose, check for updates but let me choose whether to install them, else Firefox 18 will be installed automatically again.

If by some freak chance you lost your profile. Open the profile directory as you did before, and open the back-up directory you made of your original profile. Copy the contents of that into the new profile, and you should have your old Firefox back.

I got issues two like when I go to my soundcard web page

link: http://www.rme-audio.de/en_downloads.php?page=content/downloads/en_downloads_driver&subpage=content/downloads/en_downloads_driver_hdspe

in other browser this menu is looking normally in my firefox v18 is looking like that on picture I attached, I installed freshly v18 didn't upgrade. Page shouldn't look like that at all.

What kind of issues do you have with the Firefox 18.0 version?

If Firefox is slow then a possible cause is security software (firewall,anti-virus) that blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.

Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full unrestricted access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Server+not+found
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firewalls

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

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

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

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

jcanth, the 17.0esr can still be used by regular users also and now has security fixes that 17.0.1 does not have.

The current 17.0esr is 17.0.2 at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html

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Edit: This is a better option versus using 17.0/17.0.1 however one should use the latest release instead as esr may not have all security fixes.

Thanks for that. I've upgraded to 17.02esr for the added security.

ESR is not designed for End users and does not have all the security fixes in Firefox 18. It is designed for Enterprises with an internal IT staff. What problems are you having in 18? We can help you fix them and get back on 18, which is a better experience for users.

My problem is with the Flash plug-in as delineated here

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/946714?esab=a&s=&r=0&as=s

I already run Flash with protected mode disabled as it was screwing up with FF previously.

I can't even open a Flash page anymore with FF 18 and the plugin crashing. I'm unfortunately slowly working my way over to Chrome, which doesn't have any Flash issues. I'm tired of downgrading my FF browser to v16 to get Flash to work.

EDIT: They fix it. I guess it was problem with their web site not firefox, but problem only occured in firefox in other browsers was ok, so my bad, but still v17 was running more smoothly and fluid, from my perspective bookmarks menu is kind of slow when you have a lot of them and it wasn't like that in v17.

I HAVE THIS PROBLEM TOO There is something seriously wrong with version 18 on XP AND I don't have security software AND CHROME runs like a jet engine - NO ISSUES whatsoever I have to type this in chrome because FIREFOX is LAGGING so much I can not even get a I-BEAM to type this. I have deleted,removed,reset and reinstalled still NOTHING WORKS V18 is pathetic !!!!

I would like to add additional info: After installing V18 18.0.1 update firefox became unusable An example is when you click the menubar eg Help and run your mouse over the items Firefox Help, ..... None of these items highlight at all. Also the whole program freezes and also it appears stable for a while but when using it or trying to enter text on pages nothing happens it just stops responding to windows events.

After trying a few methods - new profiles , reseting , and uninstalling nothing fixes it even after a clean install the same thing happens. Only after reverting to Firefox 17.0.1 do I get a clean responsive program back. I guess I will wait for newer versions to come out. I am running Windows XP on vmare and use other browsers as well with