Other toolbars have historically caused security issues within the Firefox browser. There is built in security that shows signed addons and extensions.

The January 30, 2014: Ad-Aware Security Toolbar was blocked by addons https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/

Is this a different toolbar?

The Ad-Aware toolbar was not blocked. Firefox says it accepted the toolbar and says it is operative. When I right-click on the toolbar area at the top of my home page or any page, I see Ad-Aware toolbar checked, just as I see checked my AVG safe search toolbar. The AVG toolbars actually shows as a working toolbar. The Ad-Aware does not show.

I loaded the toolbar initially in June of 2014. It worked until early May 2015. Then it disappeared. As my original post indicates, I uninstalled the toolbar and reloaded it,. several times. Each time Firefox accepted it and said it was operational; but each time it did not show.

Also, at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798621, your will see that a cnet download Ad-Aware toolbar (from http://download.cnet.com/Ad-Aware-Fr...) was the one that Jorge Villalobos blocked on 5 October 2012. I did not obtain The Jorge Villalobos blocked it again on 30 January 2014. I loaded it the first time 5 months after the second time Jorge Villalobos blocked it, and showed and worked perfectly until early May 2015.

Tuesday, 13 January 2015 was the last time Jorge Villalobos took action respecting the toolbar. My toolbar worked for about 6 months after that date, and then it disappeared; and since then Firefox has accepted the toolbar, said it is operational,. but it does not show.

So, the Jorge Villalobos blocking-actions are not relevant.

More important: I demand that I, not Firefox, determine whether I shall use a a toolbar. I keep my computer secure by foolproof means. I am quite grown up and capable --74 years old and 192 I.Q. and a professional well-regarded nationwide & internationally. I protest Firefox's trying to play my daddy.

If you use Customize, does the Toolbar appear anywhere? Check to make sure it hasn't appended itself to the end of a different bar, or embedded itself into a different bar, since that bar might overflow or push the Ad-Aware controls off the screen.

It's possible the file that stores certain toolbar customizations has become corrupted. You can rename the file and customize from scratch.

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• (menu bar) File > Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename xulstore.json to something like xulstore.old. If you see a file named localstore.rdf left over from earlier versions of Firefox, rename that one to localstore.old.

Start Firefox back up again. If you turn on the Ad-Aware bar again, is it displayed?

Also, I know you don't want to be parented, but there are updates available for the Adobe Acrobat plugin (from 11.0.8 to 11.0.11), Java, and Flash.

• Adobe: I recommend using the Help menu in your Adobe product (Reader or Acrobat) to "Check for Updates". This should take care of the browser plugin automatically; it doesn't involve a separate download.

• Java: http://www.java.com/en/download/installed8.jsp

• Flash: you can use either of these pages:
  • https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ (be sure to uncheck any unwanted extras)
  • https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html (choose the version for "plugin-based browsers")

Thank you, very much, jscher2000, for trying to help. But your solution failed. I use "solution" to denote this (your text):

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

   "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
   (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
   type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter 

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

   "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
   (menu bar) File > Exit 

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename xulstore.json to something like xulstore.old. If you see a file named localstore.rdf left over from earlier versions of Firefox, rename that one to localstore.old.

Start Firefox back up again. If you turn on the Ad-Aware bar again, is it displayed?

Same problem continues, in other words, you enable Ad-Aware on the toolbar list, but no toolbar appears either in normal browsing or in Customize mode?

I wonder whether another extension is interfering. What other extensions do you have installed and enabled? You can copy/paste a list from the support information page that you opened before, just scroll down a bit to find the table with extensions.

Try using this link. Is it listed here?

chrome://mozapps/content/extensions/extensions.xul?

Only two extensions: Ad-Aware toolbar and AVG toolbar. But i have used both extensions since end of May or beginning of June 2014. The Ad-Aware trouble did not begin until about a year later. Until then, I used both the Ad-Aware toolbar and the AVG toolbar, without problem. So, the trouble is not a conflict of extensions.

Things change over time, including programs. For a test, disable those and see that happens.

I did that a week ago, several times. Also, I uninstalled and re-installed the programs. Recall that the trouble began when, after both Ad-Aware & AVG toolbars had functioned properly for more than a year, suddenly the Ad-Aware toolbar disappeared.

The trouble is Firefox, which suffers quite enough other problems. I use Firefox only because it is the least evil.

I was going to test myself, but our antivirus software blocks the download site for that toolbar. Hopefully someone at Ad-Aware can explain what's going on; they must be aware of this by now.

Have you tried to disable AVG as a test?