Hi, it's possible that one of your extensions is causing this, so hold down the Shift key when you start Firefox to start in Safe Mode. More - Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode.

If it works in Safe Mode, disable your theme and all extensions except perhaps uBO - 3-bar menu > Add-ons > Themes/Extensions, then restart Firefox; now if it's still OK, re-enable them one by one until you find the culprit. You may need to restart Firefox after enabling some extensions.

Note: If you use userChrome.css - you don't have it if you don't know what it is, this is also disabled in Safe Mode, so should be regarded as an additional suspect, and can be disabled to test by placing /* before, and */ after the file in the chrome folder, then restarting Firefox.

If your question is resolved by this or another answer, please help other users by marking the best reply as Solved. Thank you!

I would like to avoid restarting my browser if at all possible (especially in another mode) because A: I don't know how and B: Because every time i do i risk losing all my tabs.

You can just try disabling your theme/extensions, except uBO - which is unlikely to be the cause, but some extensions may need a restart to disable.

Didn't seem to work.

You aren't using permanent Private Browsing mode (Always use Private Browsing mode; Never Remember History) because some extensions may not work in PB mode?

I notice that Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs# each time Firefox starts. The user.js file will only be present if you or other software has created this file and normally won't be present.

You can check its content with a text editor (right-click: "Open with"; do not double-click). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
  Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

You can check for problems with the extensions registry files in the profile folder.

Try to to reset the extensions registry and rename extensions.json (extensionsOLD.json) and rename/remove previously used extensions files like extensions.ini and extensions.sqlite when present and rename/remove compatibility.ini in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Profiles

New files will be created when required.

See "corrupt extension files":

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/unable-install-add-ons-extensions-or-themes

You can check for possible updates in case of issues.

• click the cogwheel button (left of the Search bar) on the about:addons page to "Check for updates"

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
  Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

O_O; Well someone who actually knows what they're talking about came along

now i just need a translator

Ok so i don't understand cor-el's post and i haven't heard anything from him in 2 weeks so if any one would like to attempt to translate what he said for me or who knows whats wrong with my firefox then feel free.

Cor-el's first suggestion is to make sure that the Always use Private Browsing mode option is not enabled in your Firefox settings. You can check this by going to the Firefox options page and selecting Privacy & Security from the sidebar. If you scroll down to the History section, you should uncheck the Always use Private Browsing mode option, if it's visible and is checked. If you uncheck it, you will be asked to restart Firefox.

Their other observation is that you have a file called user.js in your Firefox profile folder (the place where your Firefox data is saved). There's a variety of reasons why that file might be there, but it can often cause issues with certain Firefox add-ons or even Firefox functionality.

The easiest way to check this is to go to the about:support page in Firefox and select the Open Folder button in the Profile Folder row of the Application Basics table. That opens the aforementioned profile folder that your Firefox data is saved to and where this user.js file is saved.

In that folder, you can find the user.js and what you want to do is make it so that Firefox doesn't open this file anymore. That will help determine if that file is causing any issues. There are two common ways to do this. You can either rename the file to something else, like user-old.js, or you can move the file somewhere else, like to your desktop instead. Either way, Firefox won't be able to see that file anymore, but the file will still be there in case removing it breaks something else in Firefox (which is rare). That's why we rename or move the file instead of deleting the file completely, because if you delete it, it's gone.

Once you've done that, restart Firefox and see if you can get the extensions to work again.

The final thing that Cor-el suggested, should nothing else work, is to delete the files that Firefox has saved on your computer to keep track of what extensions you have installed. It's not very common, but sometimes these files get damaged and Firefox has issues reading them properly.

To see these files, you need to open the profile folder (just as we did above). You are looking for any file that's just called extensions. There can sometimes be a couple, so you will want to delete all of them (or move them to your desktop). However, you should not delete/move files called something else (like extension-preferences or extension-settings for example) and you should not delete the folder called extensions or anything within that folder.

Cor-el has also suggested deleting (or moving) the compatibility.ini file from your profile folder (if you see it). All the information that you are deleting is recreated by Firefox when you open it up again.

Then you should open Firefox again and see if the problems that you were having are now fixed.

NOTE: Firefox should be closed before removing or moving any files. Sometimes your computer will not allow you to do that when Firefox is open.

Hopefully I've not an adequate job translating what cor-el has wrote above for you and, more importantly, hopefully it fixes the issue for you.

ok now neither cor-el or wesley branton are responding. does this site not notify people when they get messages?

Sorry. I did see your message, but haven't had a chance to get back to you.

Was there a point that you needed clarified or explained further?

well a few but more importantly trying to communicate through a forum is . . . slow and on top of that trying to glean information from a website while your browser is down is impossible

If there is something that you need explained further, feel free to let us know.

If you are unhappy with using this forum for support, there are a lot of community contributors active on other platforms as well, such as the the Firefox subreddit.

um i'd think reddit would have the same problem. that it cant be accessed while your browser is down. which is why i asked what i did in my message to you

Unfortunately, Firefox's only official support channels are offered online.

O_o . . . dude I'm just asking if we can talk over discord or something during the process

hello?

ok that's 2 people I've lost so far. would anyone else like to help? seriously its been a month now since i came here and I'm still dealing with this.

Bump.

hi, you are using an ad-blocker and that can cause problems. i used to block everything in sight and on utube somtimes i`d get sound other times get none so i slowly started unblocking some settings and allowed a bit more freedom to the beast and have a feeling things are a bit better. anyway if you look at any privacy notices you will go crazy before you block anything. sorry for rambling david

my ad blocker completely broke (it didnt block anything) and I've uninstalled it and that hasn't fixed the issue