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Firefox has become other browsers on my windows computer, with their icon. I can't uninstall or redownload Firefox without error message

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  • Last reply by Andrew

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Firefox has become internet explorer or google chrome, with their icon and everything on my windows XP computer. I cannot uninstall or redownload Firefox without it saying "Firefox must be closed to proceed with the uninstall/install. Please close Firefox to continue." It says that when I dont even have Firefox open, and I closed everything with task manager. How can I get Firefox back? It's the only brower I ever use.

Firefox has become internet explorer or google chrome, with their icon and everything on my windows XP computer. I cannot uninstall or redownload Firefox without it saying "Firefox must be closed to proceed with the uninstall/install. Please close Firefox to continue." It says that when I dont even have Firefox open, and I closed everything with task manager. How can I get Firefox back? It's the only brower I ever use.

All Replies (4)

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Please try a reboot of your pc and if that doesn't work, try the following:

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:

Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
  3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
    • Windows:
      • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
    • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
    • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

Please report back to see if this helped you!

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Do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before reinstalling a fresh copy of Firefox.

Download a fresh Firefox copy and save the file to the desktop.

Uninstall your current Firefox version, if possible, to cleanup the Windows registry and settings in security software.

  • Do NOT remove personal data when you uninstall your current Firefox version, because all profile folders will be removed and you will also lose your personal data like bookmarks and passwords from profiles of other Firefox versions.

Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.

Your bookmarks and other profile data are stored in the Firefox Profile Folder and won't be affected by an uninstall and (re)install, but make sure that "remove personal data" is NOT selected when you uninstall Firefox.


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Didnt work, Firefox will not do anything and I cant get it to uninstall or reinstall becuase it says it is still open, when its not.

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Kill it in task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and then perform the duties.