hi wnterbass, you are using an old version of firefox. can you once update firefox . goto Help->About firefox and it will automatically update your firefox.

Resetting Firefox does cause some data loss, but preserves passwords and bookmarks etc. as explained in the article

• Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

As already advised you should first of all update Firefox. Because it works properly in safe mode I am sure amitshree will be able to discover the solution if you follow his instructions.

Thank you amitshree and John99 for your replies. I realize I haven't updated or reset Firefox yet but I was hoping there might be a solution which didn't involve either rebuilding half my profile (as in resetting) or tweaking a new version of Firefox to act and feel like the current version. I have another XP machine with the identical Firefox version and setup as I have on this one with no issues. I guess what I'm getting at is, is there a way to discover why the buttons disappeared? As I said I'm not very savvy in these issues so please forgive me if I seem ignorant.

It may well be possible, and probably rather easy to discover why the buttons disappeared, and it will almost certainly be possible to correct this without resorting to resetting Firefox.

However old versions of Firefox are no longer supported and are not secure. It is strongly recommended that you upgrade Firefox.

Have you any particular feature or extension that you think will be lost by upgrading?

As for the reason for the disappearing buttons, have you any extension that may be blocking them or their options. Or maybe you have set javascript permissions or blocked some things on a site by site basis.

Navigate to one of the problem pages,and open the page info dialogue by using Keyboard shortcut Ctrl+ I does looking at the permissions or media tabs on that throw any light on the problem.

• Firefox Page Info window
• or open the permissions manager use about:permissions {key into the location bar as if it is web or file address) for information on other settings and sites.

Your other machine without the issue may help give you clues, how do they differ ? (in relation to their Firefox settings ?)

It may help if you post two screen shots of a site that works on one machine but not the other, then we see what is missing.

• How do I create a screenshot of my problem?

Try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

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

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

You can remove all data stored in Firefox from a specific domain via "Forget About This Site" in the right-click context menu of an history entry ("History > Show All History" or "View > Sidebar > History") or via the about:permissions page.

Using "Forget About This Site" will remove all data stored in Firefox from that domain like bookmarks, cookies, passwords, cache, history, and exceptions, so be cautious and if you have a password or other data from that domain that you do not want to lose then make a note of those passwords and bookmarks.

You can't recover from this 'forget' unless you have a backup of the affected files.

It doesn't have any lasting effect, so if you revisit such a 'forgotten' website then data from that website will be saved once again.

Thank you John99 for your continued assistance. The reason I didn't want to update was because I have Firefox setup the way I like it and the last time I updated things were changed around to such an extent that I had a heck of a time getting everything back in order. I'm from the school of thought that says, if it ain't broke don't fix it. One of the first things I tried when this problem arose was disabling add-ons, so I was sure that wasn't the problem. I hadn't made any changes so I didn't think there would be a javascript settings issue or something of that sort, but I took your suggestion to look in the page info and permissions areas. I didn't really know what I was looking for but I didn't see anything that was obviously out of place or problematic. My other XP machine has Firefox setup exactly the same as on this one.

But now I have to give a big thank you to cor-el for the reply, for after disabling hardware acceleration the buttons have returned. Why this needed to be done now I have no idea, since I hadn't made any changes at all to either Firefox or my system, but I am just glad to have functionality restored without a major overhaul.