How To Troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox Crashes

(218) How To Troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox Crashes   

Web browsers are designed with complicated pieces of software, which interacting with lots of other software on your system, such as extensions, themes, plug-ins, security programs, graphics drivers, and much more. Incompatibilities or out-of-date software may often cause crashes.  

Firefox may also crash for a variety of reasons, and you can quickly fix most crashes with it’s Safe Mode and Troubleshoot info page. However, these tricks wouldn’t fix every crash. 

The Safe Mode will load Firefox without loading the Add-ons. To activate Safe Mode, click on Help then choose Restart with Add-ons Disabled. You may also activate Safe Mode by holding Shift key while starting Firefox.  

Try Safe Mode for a while, if Firefox is crashing. If Safe Mode works properly, then assume the problem is with one of your Add-ons. So, you may have to leave Safe Mode then disable Add-ons one-by-one until you identify the Add-on, which causing the problem. But do not waste your time by going, one-by-one, through the steps to identify the exact cause; instead, go to technical information page then solve the problems.

Firefox creates a technical information page to the user, where it stores the technical data, which is useful to solve problems. All the tech info will be revealed in this page. To get the technical information page, Menu > Help (then click) Troubleshooting Information.

From Troubleshooting Information page, you can reset Firefox browser by click the button Refresh Firefox. This will remove your Add-ons and customization then restore browser settings to its default. 

Now Firefox will create a new troubleshooting info page and migrating your old info such as bookmarks, browsing history, cookies, auto-fill info and saved passwords. But you will lose your extensions, themes, site-specific preferences and search engines, when you refresh Firefox. 

In particular, Firefox extensions and themes could cause crashes; so, get rid of them. 

If Firefox crashes, again, after re-install your favorite extensions, then there might be one of your extension is likely causing the crashes. Try re-installing extensions one-by-one and identify the particular extension, which causing problem, and remove it. 

Firefox has hardware acceleration feature, which take care of your computer's graphics card to render text and objects on web pages. It speeds-up web page rendering and manages some load off CPU. So, hardware acceleration may also cause problems with graphic drivers and graphic cards. Try to disable this feature, for a time being, if you face crashing.  

To disable hardware acceleration Tools > (click) Options > (choose) Advanced (tab) > General (tab, then remove the tick mark from) Use hardware acceleration when available > (then press) OK.

If Firefox works normally, without crashing, then assume hardware acceleration was likely the problem. Try to update graphic drivers and they may fix the problems. Note that you should not disable hardware acceleration, if everything works properly, as this is a useful feature. 

Malware may also cause Firefox to crash, as malware can cause other programs to crash on your system. If you face regular crashing, then scan your computer with an antivirus program that you already have on your system or download from Microsoft Security Essentials. 

Mozilla recommends to update your system's software, if Firefox is crashing. Below list of everything should have to be updated:
1. Firefox browser has to be updated in a frequent manner. To make update: Help > (click) About Firefox. Download available updates and install.

2. Plug-ins: Visit the Firefox plug-in update check page, where the page will scan the browser for outdated Plug-ins. Follow the links to download and install updates for any outdated plugins.

3. Extensions and Themes: Tools > (click) Add-ons (and select) Extensions. (Click) Gear (box, and select) Check for Updates. Install any updated Add-ons.

4. Windows: Use Windows Update to ensure Windows is up-to-date. 
5. Graphics Drivers: Install updated graphics drivers to fix problems with hardware acceleration. 
6. Internet Security Software: Install the latest versions of any firewalls, antivirus programs, Internet security suites, and other security applications installed on your system. 

System's hardware problems may also cause Firefox and other software to crash. Try checking your computer’s RAM for errors if crashes continue to occur.

Happy Speedy Browsing - Mozilla FIREFOX!

How to Do Mozilla Firefox Faster Again!

Have you experienced the SPEEDY FIREFOX browser slowing down or crashing? It's the reason of unwanted plug-ins, extensions, and the browsing data could do the browser speed slow or even crashing. 

Well! We'll discuss how to rectify the problems to speeding-up Firefox by disabling plug-ins, extensions and clearing browsing data.

Plug-in (or plugin) is a piece of software components, which adds specific abilities to an application and commonly used in web browsers to play video, audio, online games, presentations, scanning viruses, display new file types and more. 

Plug-in helps Firefox to manage internet contents such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, Java, Quicktime, Silverlight etc., and perhaps, there were some other plug-ins also installed automatically and those were actually not required for our work. So, these type of (unwanted) plug-ins could make slowing the speed of Firefox and they can be rectified by disabling them.  

Managing plugins: Click the Firefox button and select Add-ons from the drop-down menu. (or from Menu bar > Tools > Add-ons)  

Now Add-ons Manager will open in a new tab. Click 'Plugins' from the left side of the tab. A list of installed plug-ins will be displayed. For the plugin(s) that you want to disable, click the corresponding 'Disable' button at the right.

NOTE: Plugins can only be disabled and they can not be deleted or uninstalled; but the plugin is associated with an extension, then the plugin could automatically be removed while uninstalling the extension.

After disabling, the plug-ins went gray in color and Disable button changes to Enable and it can be changed again to Disable, if required. 

Aware when disabling plug-ins such as Flash Player, QuickTime, and Java Applets etc., that were often take part in lots of web site to run the applications, videos etc.,  

As indicated earlier, plugins can not be uninstalled, manually. Most plugins, however, come with their own un-installation utilities. Visit plugins article from Firefox Help site for the information how to uninstall various common plugins. Further if you find an uninstaller program doesn't work for a particular plugin, then visit manually uninstall a plugin.
           

Extension is a programming file that serves to extend the capabilities or the data available to a basic program. It is a kind of (or list of) commands which are directly included in the program. This term often (mistakenly) coincides with plug-in. When installing software, you may be instructed to take one or more steps related to installing extensions (or these steps may automatically be done for you). 

In Firefox, extensions are doing a roll to add additional functions such as blocking advertisements, downloading videos, integrating social network sites etc., and enhancing the features of Firefox, too.

However, installing more extensions will slowing down the speed of Firefox. So, installing less (or required) extensions will keep Firefox speed normal. To speeding up Firefox, extensions should be disabled (not to be uninstalled) and later those can be enabled due to our requirements.

To disable an extension click 'Extensions' from the left side of Add-ons Manager. 

The extension is also changed to grey color when it will be disabled. And the same could also be enabled, if required. Some extensions are incompatible with the newer version of Firefox and could not be work. 

Most extensions require you to restart Firefox to be disabled. If you get a restart message, as shown in the below image, then click 'Restart now' link.

Note: Option button is not available for disabled extensions and the disabled extensions are moved to the end of the extensions list. 

If you like to remove an extension, completely, then open Add-ons Manager and search the extension that you want to remove from the list. Click the Remove button corresponding to the extension. If you get Restart message for removed extension, then click Restart now link to complete the removal process. 

Note: An extension can also be removed, when it is in disabled mode. 

Browsing Data: Firefox also keeps the tracks of sites that you've visited as files downloaded, cookies, and more. All these data were collected in the history and when the history database became larger and larger then Firefox will be slowing down or crashing. Firefox provides several methods to clear the browsing data.  

From Menu bar click History then select Clear Recent History from the drop-down menu. 

From 'Clear All History' dialog box (as pictured below), you can choose the deletion type as you wish. Select the boxes under 'Details' for the items you want to clear.

 

Note: If you choose 'Everything', a warning message will display and saying 'This action cannot be undone'.

Clear Browsing Data for a Single Website: If you like to keep browsing data for few websites, and not for others then you may choose selected data for the specific sites to clear browsing history. From Menu bar click History then select Show All History from the drop-down menu. 

The Library dialog box will display. From left pane of Library dialog box, choose the time frame (i.e.,Today, Yesterday and so on) that you visited the websites, and to clear the history. 

A list of websites, for the time you visited, will be displayed in the right pane (as shown above). Right click on the desired website in the list and select 'Forget About This Site' from the popup menu. If there will be a long list of sites, you can use 'Search History' box to find out the desired website. 

Note: Firefox doesn't provide re-confirmation message for this process while you delete the desired sites.
         

Clear Browsing Data  When Firefox Exits: To clear browsing data, automatically, when you close Firefox, from Menu bar choose Tools > Options.  

From Options dialog box, open 'Privacy' tab and select 'Use custom settings for history' under 'History' section.   

 

Now you'll be prompted for additional options as shown in the below picture.  Tick the box of 'Clear history when Firefox closes' then click 'Settings' button.  

Now 'Settings for Clearing History' dialog box will be opened; tick the boxes for the items that you want to clear when you close Firefox then click OK button. You'll be taken, again, to the 'Options' dialog box; click OK to accept your changes.

!!!HAPPY SPEEDY BROWSING!!!

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