Those who surf with Firefox as the default browser and encounter occasional errors that crash the browser by closing it suddenly or that block the program, can follow the following methods of troubleshooting. Not only Firefox, like any program, can have bugs or errors unknown to Mozilla who develops it, but, since it is a browser that opens websites and that can be enhanced through plugins and extensions, the risk of ruining its configuration and making it unstable is quite high. There are times when it closes on its own in an instant (crash) and other times when it freezes and freezes while remaining open but without responding to commands.
In the latter case, to close it, the only thing to do is open the task manager, find the firefox.exe process and terminate it (see guide to terminate blocked programs that no longer respond).
There are many reasons for errors: the installation of incompatible themes, badly developed extensions or programming errors in plugins.
In this post, some steps to fix Firefox problems on Windows if it crashes often or crashes .
1) First of all, it is better to clear the browser cache, the history and also the list of Downloads. For the latter, go to the Firefox menu at the top left, click on 'Download' and delete the list with the button at the bottom . Also, if the folder where Firefox is trying to save the downloaded files isn't accessible or doesn't exist, it can be a problem.
Then type the about: config command on the Firefox address bar, look for the browser.download.lastDir line (using the filter at the top) and change, if necessary, the folder is set. From the Firefox menu enter the options and, in the general tab, check which folder is used to save the downloaded files.
Sometimes the history of the sites visited interferes with the start of the browser and can slow down Firefox a lot. Then clear the history from the Options menu > Privacy> Clear history . You could also consider using a program like CCleaner to completely empty the entire Firefox cache.
2) If you install many plugins and extensions, it may be that one of them is responsible for blocks, crashes or errors.
At this point it is better to open Firefox in safe mode by clicking on the Firefox button at the top -> Help -> Restart Firefox by deactivating the add-ons . By trying the browser in non-extension mode, you should immediately understand if the problem stems from one of them or not.
If so, if therefore the browser works wonderfully without extensions and plugins, you will have to try to disable them one by one to find the manager.
Mozilla itself provides a check for updates to Firefox plugins .
Update : starting from Firefox 13 it is possible to enter the Help menu -> Troubleshooting and make a Firefox reset that corrects all the problems by creating a new profile in place of the current one, keeping the saved data, the favorite sites, the passwords, the timeline.
3) One of the plugins often responsible for crashes and freezes in Firefox is the usual Adobe Flash .
It is better to install the latest flash version to solve the problem.
Linked to Flash, it may be necessary to try to disable hardware acceleration, first of the flash plugin and then of Firefox itself (from the Options -> Advanced -> General menu).
Another often conflicting and unstable plugin is Java to download in an updated version.
In addition, you can disable the Container plugin which in some cases takes up a lot of CPU on the computer.
As the Mozilla guide for Firefox crashes also suggests, on the Windows computer you need to make sure that you have no viruses and that you have all the updated components.
4) Windows shell extensions can bring problems to the Firefox browser.
You can then use the ShellExView tool to disable some unnecessary options from the right click menu, if any, those related to Firefox.
5) Browser problems can also arise from integrations of external programs such as antivirus, password manager, an external download manager, PDF reader or many others that interact with websites. Again, you can try to disable them one by one to find out if there is a manager.
6) To cut the bull's head and reset Firefox, instead of reinstalling it from scratch, you can create a new profile . This can be done on the //accounts.firefox.com web page.
In another article the guide to synchronize Firefox . Following the online synchronization guide, you can re-import all the settings to the new profile.
7) Reduce the memory usage of Firefox which, especially on slower computers, can slow down and freeze.
Taking a cue from the guide to Optimize Firefox for faster internet browsing on websites, I recommend opening about: config and changing the value browser.cache.memory.capacity with value 100000 and browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers with value 0.
If you don't feel confident about changing these configurations, I recommend using some of the extensions to reduce memory consumption on Firefox .
8) Finally, as already explained, the reset of Firefox using the safe mode that definitely solves every problem.
