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Firefox stops responding immediately after startup. I've tried all the recommended troubleshooting methods and cannot figure out why.

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I have tried all of the recommended troubleshooting methods but none of them seem to work. This issue began despite no change being made to Firefox, or my computer; it just spontaneously stopped responding after launch. Not only does Firefox stop responding, but it also prevents any other programs from being launched, and make already launched programs extremely slow. Furthermore, once it stops responding, it becomes impossible to get rid of; the only way is to log off, or restart the computer entirely.

I have tried all of the recommended troubleshooting methods but none of them seem to work. This issue began despite no change being made to Firefox, or my computer; it just spontaneously stopped responding after launch. Not only does Firefox stop responding, but it also prevents any other programs from being launched, and make already launched programs extremely slow. Furthermore, once it stops responding, it becomes impossible to get rid of; the only way is to log off, or restart the computer entirely.

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It is possible that Firefox has updated to 36.0.4.

It is possible that your security software (firewall, anti-virus) 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 install for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.

See:

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I tried that, and it didn't work. I also tried installing an earlier version of Firefox, and the issue still occurred.

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Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

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I tried all of those. The only thing that any of them found was some adware. Firefox is still broken though.

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What security software (firewall, anti-virus) do you have?

Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test.