When you reinstalled Firefox, did you first uninstall it? It helps if you do the uninstall first. But make sure you don't put a checkmark on the option to erase your personal data. Because that will permanently erase your bookmarks and passwords saved in Firefox.

Your problem does sound quite bad. It could be because your graphics card driver files are outdated. Try doing a search for "AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics drivers". The current ones you have are version 8.792.0.0 from 11-9-2010. Look for something newer than that. Hopefully updating the graphics drivers fixes this.

Hi Noah,

Thanks for the reply. I think I uninstalled during one of my iterations, but to be sure I did it again. No change. Here is the window's error message I get when I close FF after it comes up and hangs:

A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:

 Problem Event Name:	AppHangB1
 Application Name:	firefox.exe
 Application Version:	26.0.0.5087
 Application Timestamp:	52a0d273
 Hang Signature:	0a9a
 Hang Type:	1
 OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
 Locale ID:	1033
 Additional Hang Signature 1:	0a9a221b0d60d0fb56c448c4e0572071
 Additional Hang Signature 2:	5994
 Additional Hang Signature 3:	59946f4d0444749b5b1346100b958684
 Additional Hang Signature 4:	75bf
 Additional Hang Signature 5:	75bfd2bb1643c21563489874af05694c
 Additional Hang Signature 6:	13e9
 Additional Hang Signature 7:	13e91cc0a12da8798fb82a0b71fac1a8

I wonder how a graphics driver could cause the problem since I can get FF to run after jumping through hoops, and I have no problems in any other app.

I agree that this does not look good. Is there away to load an earlier version of FF? If not, I may, reluctantly, have to use chrome or opera until another version of FF comes out the door or some other problem pops up that might have commonality.

Thanks again!

Windows says that my AMD Radeon driver is up to date.

Looked on AMD site for dirvers and all that is available is a beta. No thanks.

second update.

Tried booting windows 7 in safe mode with no network support. FF hangs on start up in windows safe mode.

Try Firefox 25 then and let me know if you still have this problem:
https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-25.0&os=win&lang=en-US

I'm thinking there may be 3rd party software interfering with Firefox as it tries to startup causing it to hang. Possibly something you installed recently.

Hi Noah,

Thanks for the ideas. I loaded FF 25 and same problems occur.

I think that you are right about 3rd party software. I updated windows before updating FF, but I do not think that is a problem.

I was having some problems with FF before loading 26, and settled on FF26 as the problem when it would not load after install. But since 25 will not load either, I do not think it is FF.

When I was first looking for mozilla to update, I got in a hurry and mistakenly clicked on one of those crap-ware sites that appears on the top of the list when you google on FF. I mistakenly began loading FF from this non mozilla site, but declined to load when it stated it would load a special toolbar. I now think it gave me a payload anyway. I immediately deleted the thing from my pc, so I don't know the name of it.

I have spent hours reviewing event logs, processes running, etc. on my pc.. I think this is going to take a long, long time. I may resort to a complete reload.

Thanks for your helpful advice and your time, but at this point I do not think Mozilla or anyone else can help me. I just have to slog through this.

Best Regards and thanks again!

D'oh! That sucks! I had a feeling something like that may have happened. It's not your fault. Recently Google has removed the khaki colored background from its top placed ads, making you think it's a regular search result and increasing the clicks on it. I nearly clicked on one myself! Until I looked closely. Google's becoming more evil and sneaky. They can't even be bothered to check their ads for malware. :/

We may be able to at least backup some of your Firefox's profile data so that you don't have to start from scratch if you erase everything. You can backup bookmarks and passwords saved in Firefox by copying over certain files. For example, places.sqlite has your bookmarks and browsing history. Passwords are saved in 2 files of key3.db & signons.sqlite, both files must be copied over or else the passwords will be lost.

Read these articles to help guide you:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Recovering%20important%20data%20from%20an%20old%20profile

^ Look at the sections for:

• Copying files between profile folders
• Your important data and their files

After you have backed everything up, try creating a new profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Then try starting Firefox again. Hopefully it will stay fixed this time. If it continues to startup fine then we can copy over your bookmarks, etc to this working profile.

Any other questions, please ask. I've dealt with Firefox in all states of brokenness and I won't let this one stump me. ;)

Thank you once again for the help, Noah.

I have to get some things off my plate, but I will follow the path you laid out as soon as I can.

Thanks Noah.

I think I fixed it, give this a try because it started to do this on both my PCs.

Go to Options > General Tab > StartUp switch to "Show a blank page" and everything loads up fine. What I had before was "Show my home page" which was the default Firefox page with the Fox Logo and History, Favorites and other options at the bottom.

There has been an issue reported with a snippet on the about:home page.

See [/questions/984193#answer-525530]

Amazing!

Thanks TabletKey. It worked for me too. Not only does FF come up with my jumping though hoops, it will now shut down normally too.

I also found that I can, after starting with a blank startup screen, and closing FF, can use an url as a startup screen.

The only negative I have found is that when FF starts up, it does not bring up my last tabs and windows. I can live with that.

Thanks again.

Update.

I changed FF settings to not delete browsing and download history when FF closes, and now tabs reappear on startup. :-)

Thanks cor-el.

That snippet may have caused my original problem when I upgraded to FF26 several days ago.

Thanks Noah!

TabletKey's solution worked for me. I have copied your ideas for future reference.

I am closing my problem now and have made FF my default browser again. Firefox is once again the best!!

Thanks again for all of your time.

Best, Verdae