The last thing Firefox tried to do was listed as:

gfxWindowsPlatform::InitD3D11Devices()

That strongly suggests an incompatibility with your graphics card/chipset driver software.

Could you try disabling Firefox's use of hardware acceleration? You'll need to start Firefox in its Safe Mode to do this.

If Firefox is not running: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox.

A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Refresh).

Hopefully Firefox starts up. Then go to:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

This will take effect in normal mode the next time you exit Firefox and start it up again. Any improvement?

Negative. Can't get it to launch even in safe-mode, still crashes.

Is it possible to extract the crash report ID from that crash to see what the issue is? (It should be a different issue.) The steps in the last section of this article might be the way: Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly).

Crash ID: bp-4cb986e0-f38c-42c7-95e9-3899e2150331 Crash ID: bp-4ecd0a84-3482-4d90-808d-edba52150331

Okay, I don't understand why Firefox is trying to do hardware acceleration in Safe Mode. Maybe this is a new bug?

Although I normally do not suggest this, you can find a link to Firefox 36.0.4 in this article: Install an older version of Firefox. It would be worth testing whether that still runs to see whether it is a version 37.0 issue. I suggest this procedure:

Clean Reinstall

We use this name, but it's not about removing your data/settings, it's about making sure the program files are clean. As described below, this process does not disturb your existing settings. Do NOT uninstall Firefox, that's not needed.

(1) Download the installer for Firefox 36.0.4 using a working browser

(2) Rename the program folder

(64-bit Windows folder names)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox

to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Firefox37

(32-bit Windows folder names)

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox

to

C:\Program Files\Firefox37

(3) Run the installer you downloaded in #1. It should automatically connect to your existing settings.

Does Firefox 36.0.4 start up?

Note: Some plugins may exist only in that Firefox37 folder. If something essential is missing, look in these folders:

• \Firefox37\Plugins
• \Firefox37\browser\plugins

Looks as though I will be stuck in 36 for a while. Launched perfectly - changed it to run without hardware acceleration. I then allowed it to update to 37 to see if it would reproduce the problem and it immediately did even with preferences having been changed. For the time being I will just use 36 til they get this bug figured out on their end.

DJILLY, i've filed bug #1149761 about this issue.

in case you are willing to invest a bit of time it would be of great help if you could narrow down the timeframe of when the problem first occurred in the development builds of firefox - this can be done by using the mozregression tool, which will look a bit technical at first sight, but we can guide you through the steps. it shouldn't be that difficult, but will require a bit of time:

• first you'd have to download and install (confirm all setup steps & click close once the process is completed) the the tool from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/libraries/win32/MozillaBuildSetup-Latest.exe
• then open windows explorer and navigate to your C:-drive and then the mozilla-build folder. in there you'll find a file named start-l10n.bat - just double-click on that.
• in the black terminal window that opens, type in:
  easy_install mozregression & hit enter
• once this process is finished, enter:
  mozregression --good=2014-11-25 --bad=2015-01-20 --bits=32
  into the same window.
• now the process will automatically download browser builds from the time the error first occurred - just wait until a firefox "nightly" window opens and test if you can reproduce the bug there. then close the browser windows and enter good or bad into the terminal depending on if you got the error this time.
• this process will continue automatically until the exact date is found when the bug was first introduced into the browser - the window will then display a so called regression window and a pushlog. this is the critical piece of information we'd need, so developers can take over and start fixing what's going wrong... please copy and paste this section into the forum here or make a screenshot of it.
• you can then close the terminal window and delete the C:\mozilla-build folder again.

thanks again & please feel free to ask if anything is unclear...

Had to pull a Leroy and go get chicken. Running that now philipp.

great thanks a bunch! this could quicken up a fix tremendously since by producing a regression range developers would already know where exactly to look for the problem...

Hope this helps out:

Push Log

great thanks! i don't know if it will be necessary but it may be of help, so i'd like to ask for another piece of information: in firefox 36 when you enter about:support into the address bar, could you copy the content of the graphics section and paste it here into a reply?

Graphics Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Adapter Drivers nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um Adapter RAM 2048 Device ID 0x1183 DirectWrite Enabled false (6.2.9200.16571) Driver Date 3-13-2015 Driver Version 9.18.13.4788 GPU #2 Active false GPU Accelerated Windows 0/1 Basic (OMTC) Subsys ID 36623842 Vendor ID 0x10de WebGL Renderer Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0) windowLayerManagerRemote true AzureCanvasBackend skia AzureContentBackend cairo AzureFallbackCanvasBackend cairo AzureSkiaAccelerated 0

thanks, after further investigation it turns out that this is most likely caused by stardock's windowsblinds software, that you probably have running on the system as well...

hi again DJILLY, one thing you could try while mozilla's developers are continuing to look into the matter: when you switch to the windows aero theme in stardock's theming software this should likely stop the crash and make it possible to use firefox 37 for the moment - can you confirm this?

just to update you: firefox 37.0.1 has been released to address this crashing problem at startup, so you could try updating again.