Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cannot uninstall manually installed older versions of Firefox - Any tips?

more options

I have manually installed multiple older versions of Firefox for Desktop (Windows 10), as I am translating KB articles and sometimes need any of the twenty latest versions to get screenshots in my language for the translated articles.

When an older version becomes superfluous, I would like to uninstall it from my computer, but that does not work. Even though I see all the older Firefox versions listed in Windows Applications & Features and each of them has an Uninstall button (and a helper.exe file in the uninstall folder in the installation folder each of the versions), the only "action" I see is that I get a warning that the Firefox Helper application is about to make change to the content of my hard drive, and will I allow that? The pop-up asking if I want to refresh Firefox instead of uninstalling, it does NOT appear.

The only time I get a proper response, i.e the Refresh-instead-of-uninstall? pop-up, is when I initiate uninstall of the latest current version of Firefox, in my case Fx132.0.2.

Have anyone else come across this problem?

I have manually installed multiple older versions of Firefox for Desktop (Windows 10), as I am translating KB articles and sometimes need any of the twenty latest versions to get screenshots in my language for the translated articles. When an older version becomes superfluous, I would like to uninstall it from my computer, but that does not work. Even though I see all the older Firefox versions listed in Windows ''Applications & Features'' and each of them has an '''Uninstall''' button (and a ''helper.exe'' file in the ''uninstall'' folder in the installation folder each of the versions), the only "action" I see is that I get a warning that the Firefox Helper application is about to make change to the content of my hard drive, and will I allow that? The pop-up asking if I want to refresh Firefox instead of uninstalling, it does NOT appear. The only time I get a proper response, i.e the ''Refresh-instead-of-uninstall?'' pop-up, is when I initiate uninstall of the latest current version of Firefox, in my case Fx132.0.2. Have anyone else come across this problem?

All Replies (1)

more options

(This is less of a tip and more of a cynical observation...)

As a longtime user of Windows, I don't completely trust installers to keep different versions cleanly separated in the Windows registry. Sometimes versions you already removed will linger, while other times the control panel method will just fail for no good reason.

Using the helper.exe program in the old version folder should actually remove the unwanted installation. It might not clean up well after itself in the Registry, but it sounds like that might already be a bit of a mess.

Helpful?

Sual ver

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.