Hello Magentae,

first of all I need some informations.

Which Firefox version do you use? And which OS?

I think that you have already checked your internet connection.

Are you connected via WLAN or via LAN?

Do you use a proxy?

Please do not comment in bug reports. Bug 1180419 - After upgrading to Firefox 39, could not launch URL from Address bar. Enter key won't work. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1180419

Andi.B said

Which Firefox version do you use? And which OS?

Look at the upper right of the page. Open the Question tools, Question details, and the Tags menus. BTW, good questions.

Hi Magentae

A bit of a long shot. We are guessing you have come up against a new known bug in Firefox that affects some users with corrupt bookmarks databases and breaks the address bar.

I have to explain that so you can understand why I am proposing a possible solution which seem unrelated to the URL bar issue.

First try the addon places maintenance. The addon gets its name from the name of the database file used to store Bookmarks and History. It may just fix the database file if you download and run it.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

If the database is fixed and you are affected by the bug your URL bar will start to work again.

There is only a low chance the above will fix your problem. It is well worth trying though. It is a quick and easy option.

The next option is sure to fix the problem if it is the bug we suspect. Unfortunately you will lose your Browsing history. You need to find a file places.sqlite in the profile, close Firefox, rename the file and restart Firefox. Not too dificut to do.

• See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locked_or_damaged_places.sqlite#Rebuild_Places_database
• Or Steps explained in this oddly named help article
  • Fix "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional" error message_solution-2-create-a-new-places-database
• More detail in Firefox 39 address bar not working /questions/1070999#answer-750702 including mention of a potential fix suitable only for advanced users.

There is some possibility this History could be restored later depending partly on progress with the bug investigation.

Andi's Questions Relates to general Internet problems. The information requested may well help Andi solve your problems if it is a general Internet problem.

Fred Is guessing you have a problem with the new bug. if so my reply above should enable you to fix the problem. Note he bug name has changed

After upgrading to Firefox 39, 
could not launch URL from Address bar. Enter key won't work. 
→ Cannot load URLs from the address bar if places.sqlite is corrupt

The information over there linked by Fred is useful to us helpers, but it probably is of little interest to you.

P.S PLEASE post back to say what you tried. And to give further information

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

• Places Maintenance: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

Hi john99 - Of the two options that you offered as solutions, the first one didn't do anything, however the second one certainly seems to have solved the issue of browsing, although it did take a bit of searching to to find the places.sqlite file, which was buried fairly deeply withing my profile. Of interest all of my old bookmarks are back as well, and I am posting this reply from Firefox, so all seems to be well again. Thanks so much for your prompt help on this. That goes to all who attempted to help here.

I'm not closing this in case you need to see the reply, but the problem is definitely solved.

Fred's guess was correct then. It appears it was bug 1180419. Glad it is working. I will mark the thread as solved. Thanks for posting back.

Maybe it was the places maintenance addon that fixed the old bookmarks, thats the sort of thing it tries to do. Also the recreation process uses the latest available internal automated bookmarks backup so we don't normally expect this workaround to cause loss of bookmarks other than the ones added in the last session.

We have Developers looking at this bug and are hoping a fix will be rushed into Firefox. The fix should be in Fx39, in a few weeks, if not earlier. I am not certain we know much about the cause of the underlying corruption of the bookmarks file. A developer mentioned this corruption is relatively rare being seen on a small percentage of a less than 4% subset of Firefox users.

Fingers crossed that the recreated database solved for you and that this will not happen again (Or at least it doesn't happen before the bug fix stops corruption breaking Firefox).