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the directory is corrupt and unreadable

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 14 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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For whatever reason, firefox is completely broken. From what I can tell, it's only firefox.I exited firefox as normal, and it was working fine. I closed my computer for a little bit, but didn't turn it off, and when I came back I tried to go on firefox again. It started updating, and, halfway through the firefox update, my computer blue screened. When it restarted, I tried to reopen firefox, but this message appeared:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe

The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

I'm typing this is internet explorer, which works fine. Any help?

For whatever reason, firefox is completely broken. From what I can tell, it's only firefox.I exited firefox as normal, and it was working fine. I closed my computer for a little bit, but didn't turn it off, and when I came back I tried to go on firefox again. It started updating, and, halfway through the firefox update, my computer blue screened. When it restarted, I tried to reopen firefox, but this message appeared: C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable I'm typing this is internet explorer, which works fine. Any help?

All Replies (2)

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Hi, try performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove your Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. This process does not remove your Firefox profile data (such as bookmarks and passwords), since that information is stored in a different location.

To do a clean reinstall of Firefox, please follow these steps: Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (or open the Firefox menu New Fx Menu and click the close button Close 29).
  3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
    • Windows:
      • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
    • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
    • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.

WARNING: Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.

Please report back to say if this helped you!

Thank you.

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Maybe also check the hard drive with the chkdsk.exe program. If you run the chkdsk.exe program from a cmd.exe Command window then you can read the response from the chkdsk.exe program.

Open a cmd.exe window: Start > Run: cmd.exe <press Enter> At the command prompt (>) type or Copy&Paste: chkdsk.exe /f /r <press Enter> (put a space before /f and /r) If you get something like: Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? y/n then answer the question with "Y" and close all programs and reboot the computer.