Firefox Crashing, Can’t fix with re-install and/or Security Disabled.

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Could use some help / advise if anyone has had similar issues:

I have 6 users, all with Win 7 Pro machines who all came to work this morning and none of these 6 computers can load the Firefox browser When attempted the Firefox app pops up a message, sorry that Firefox has crashed and with the option to restart or quit. Quitting kills the process (confirmed task manager) and restart flashes another popup about starting in safe mode but it blurs on and off so fast it’s tough to read.

I’m pretty sure that I have the settings for Firefox (& Win7) not to automatically apply updates (only notify) so nothing has been installed since last night. All machines shut down yesterday at 3:30pm All machines had the same issue this morning and after booting up and working fine last evening.

Tried an uninstall and reinstall, both with Reg Clean after uninstall and reboot of systems and nothing works. Can’t get to the Safe Mode start as it flashes on and off. One use did have the option to start in Safe Mode but it still crashed.

Anyone have any clue(s)??? All machine have up to date Norton 360 Premium Antivirus.

Thanks for any offered insight !!

Chuck

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Instead of dealing with Firefox itself at this moment, I would concentrate on finding out what changed in your environment since yesterday using Event Viewer… or possibly more useful, Nir Sofer’s (portable) MyEventViewer so you can see both Application and System logs in tandem.

(Also, double-check the Windows Update settings… ‘cos it’s Patch Tuesday.)

Hope this helps…

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IE and/or Google Chrome — the same thing — on these computers?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Rick / Roland,

Appreciate the offer to help !

Prefacing my comments with the understanding that I’m not overly computer literate though I’ve managed our small group for a number of years without too much difficulty, ie: No formal training.

I downloaded MyEventViewer and looked at all the events since boot up this morning but unfortunately I’m not savvy enough to understand what most of it means so it’s not too useful to me.

Tried IE on a number of these machines and it seems to work okay. I don’t have Chrome installed yet on any machine. I also have two machines on my network that are XP machines and, one my personal PC and I fired up Firefox on both and it works okay. I then forced an upgrade to the latest release of Firefox (48.0.2) on my machine and no difficulty what so ever. Seems to be relegated to the Win 7 machines. (no automatic updates set). I’m flummoxed !

Chuck

PS: Not knowing what to do next I’m currently running a copy of MalwareBytes on all my network shares to see if anything looks out of place.

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I downloaded MyEventViewer and looked at all the events since boot up this morning but unfortunately I’m not savvy enough to understand what most of it means so it’s not too useful to me.

PS: Not knowing what to do next I’m currently running a copy of MalwareBytes on all my network shares to see if anything looks out of place.

In MyEventViewer, in the column marked Source, are there any MsiInstaller events between yesterday and today? If so, click on the event(s) in the top pane to see in the lower pane what was installed.

For example, I have MalwareBytes Anti-Malware installed and it was updated automatically last night whilst I was asleep.

When was Norton 360 last updated?

Hope this helps…

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after I run Norton live update Firefox crashes. I have reloaded windows from backup 3 times and every time I run live update it happens again.

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Could use some help / advise if anyone has had similar issues:

I have 6 users, all with Win 7 Pro machines who all came to work this morning and none of these 6 computers can load the Firefox browser When attempted the Firefox app pops up a message, sorry that Firefox has crashed and with the option to restart or quit. Quitting kills the process (confirmed task manager) and restart flashes another popup about starting in safe mode but it blurs on and off so fast it’s tough to read.

I’m pretty sure that I have the settings for Firefox (& Win7) not to automatically apply updates (only notify) so nothing has been installed since last night. All machines shut down yesterday at 3:30pm All machines had the same issue this morning and after booting up and working fine last evening.

Tried an uninstall and reinstall, both with Reg Clean after uninstall and reboot of systems and nothing works. Can’t get to the Safe Mode start as it flashes on and off. One use did have the option to start in Safe Mode but it still crashed.

Anyone have any clue(s)??? All machine have up to date Norton 360 Premium Antivirus.

Thanks for any offered insight !!

Chuck

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It sounds like a re-run of: Firefox crashes on start up after Norton update to 22.5.4.24 — will not start even in safe mode.

Try temporarily disabling Norton to see if Firefox will run.

Hope this helps…

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Rick, Randy,

Norton 360 has a task icon menu that allows me to disable Smart Firewall & Auto Protect for a predefined amount of time. Tried that and it didn’t help but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some other Norton thing still conflicting.

It just so happens that everyone was calling me in the last couple of days stating that they received an update Norton message that stated they had to reboot their computer for the latest update to take effect, bingo Rick, I think you hit upon something with Norton.

Since I have 7 machines like this I’m probably not the only person having this difficulty and maybe the best bet is to use IE for a short while and await the next update of Norton or Firefox should they be pressed to issue a fix if widespread.

Thanks again.
Chuck

PS: MalwareBytes scan of the network shares turned up negative

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I uninstalled norton and installed newest version. then do live update. then restart.

Rick, Randy,

Norton 360 has a task icon menu that allows me to disable Smart Firewall & Auto Protect for a predefined amount of time. Tried that and it didn’t help but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some other Norton thing still conflicting.

It just so happens that everyone was calling me in the last couple of days stating that they received an update Norton message that stated they had to reboot their computer for the latest update to take effect, bingo Rick, I think you hit upon something with Norton.

Since I have 7 machines like this I’m probably not the only person having this difficulty and maybe the best bet is to use IE for a short while and await the next update of Norton or Firefox should they be pressed to issue a fix if widespread.

Thanks again.
Chuck

PS: MalwareBytes scan of the network shares turned up negative

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I uninstalled norton and installed newest version. then do live update. then restart.

Many thanks for letting us know that this worked for you.

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Randy,

Glad to know that worked for you. What a pain. Don’t know how many times I’ve had to uninstall Norton (with their tool) and then re-install to overcome some stupid problem with getting it to work properly. I suppose all the AV’s have their own issues but I’m tired of doing this….. looks like I’ll have to do this to all 7 machines running Win 7… like I said What a Pain.

Thanks,
Chuck

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I gave up on Norton/Symantec about 10 to 12 years after having problems “similar to this”. The kitchen sink approach I do NOT need. Back then, I had to go through and manually delete all sorts of stuff to actually remove Norton (or whatever it was called back then). One incident that really ticked me off was this:

1. I had a dual boot PC then.
2. I forget in which order I had the two OSs.
3. But, after a Norton update…one of them would NOT boot (it had worked fine for almost a year before that).
4. Their solution was to “reverse” the boot order even though it had worked for almost a year).
5. After that, no more Norton for me.

I do use Malwarebytes and a free AV program.

K

Randy,

Glad to know that worked for you. What a pain. Don’t know how many times I’ve had to uninstall Norton (with their tool) and then re-install to overcome some stupid problem with getting it to work properly. I suppose all the AV’s have their own issues but I’m tired of doing this….. looks like I’ll have to do this to all 7 machines running Win 7… like I said What a Pain.

Thanks,
Chuck

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Running Windows 7 Professional on my three computers over here.
While it might not work at all for your 7 computers’ environment, I finally settled on Windows Firewall, MSE [WD can be activated if MSE goes down temporarily], Emsisoft AntiMalware [which is also an AV], SpywareBlaster, Ruiware/BillP combine. Quoting the king of Planet 51 cartoon movie: There are always alternatives.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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As a follow up to Randy having to uninstall and then re-install Norton in order to get Firefox back up and running, since I have 7 users I had planned to go through this laborious task on the weekend when folks were offline. Low & behold the next day we all came to work and I started receiving calls that Firefox was working. I can only assume the somehow Norton pushed down another update (since they are applied automatically) that fixed the problem as what are the odds that all 7 machine won’t run Firefox where they did the day before and then they all work 100% the day after the issue?

You wonder if the folks at Norton realized they broke something on the previous update that forced everyone to re-boot and fixed it quietly as I couldn’t find anything related to this elsewhere on the web? I lost a full day trying to solve this but at least I decided to wait to do anything further and at least my Saturday won’t be ruined

…..and so the game continues……

Thanks All,
Chuck

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Norton updates are not the only culprits from time to time; numerous threads across The ‘Net mention Windows Updates causing problems from time to time.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Very true, which is why many people do NOT like the Win10 update model. I have to say that I have used Firefox for many years (it was the default browser for most (maybe all) the software development group that I worked in before retiring) and have NOT used Norton for years. I don’t ever remember seeing FF have this problem.

K

Norton updates are not the only culprits from time to time; numerous threads across The ‘Net mention Windows Updates causing problems from time to time.

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