Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

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

Windows 8, Firefox 16.02 won't install due to side-by-side configuation

  • 4 replies
  • 7 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by philipp

more options

Using a Sony Vaio laptop. Bought today. Able to install Firefox 3.6. But not 16.02. When an attempt to install Firefox 16.02 is performed, an error message appears with the following.

"The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuation is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail"

Happens every time. Though Firefox 3.6 will work fine. Not perfectly, but fine.

Using a Sony Vaio laptop. Bought today. Able to install Firefox 3.6. But not 16.02. When an attempt to install Firefox 16.02 is performed, an error message appears with the following. "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuation is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail" Happens every time. Though Firefox 3.6 will work fine. Not perfectly, but fine.

All Replies (4)

more options

hello, windows 8 is not yet listed as a supported OS at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox.../system-requirements/. there's still quite a bit of integration work necessary to get firefox released on windows 8.

even if it does start up, please don't run firefox 3.6.x or any other outdated version of the browser since they will contain severe security vulnerabilities which can put your system & personal data at risk when you're online...

https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html

more options

Ah ok I won't use Firefox until the latest version is compatible.

Any idea how long it will take for there to be a version that'll run on 8?

more options

SxS issues can be caused by a corrupted Visual C++ installation (multiple versions can be installed side-by-side; SxS).

You can try to use the sxstrace.exe tool to see if you can find which files are missing or corrupted and (re)install missing Visual C++ libraries.

more options

full support of the firefox desktop version for windows 8 will come in firefox 18, which will be released in the first week of 2013 - the modern UI aka. metro version will follow some time later.

if you want to, you can also test the beta version of firefox 18 once it will land on November 19, 2012: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/beta/