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Cannot load any sites, no error message, just spinning wheel "Connecting..." forever

  • 4 replies
  • 11 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by philogl

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Firefox worked fine until my computer crashed and restarted. Now when I open Firefox it will not load any page, the current tab shows "Connecting..." and has a spinning load wheel and it gets stuck like this forever, blank white page and no error or timeout message.

If I close Firefox the firefox.exe process gets stuck and has to be manually ended using the task manager before I can open Firefox again.

Chrome and Internet Explorer both work fine on all websites and I have already tried the following: Reset Firefox Uninstalled/Re-installed Firefox Clear web cache/cookies/history Ensured 'No Proxy' is set Disabled IPv6 Disable Hardware accell Disabled all extensions and plugins Using default theme Disabled Windows Firewall and setup exception rule for firefox.exe

Firefox worked fine until my computer crashed and restarted. Now when I open Firefox it will not load any page, the current tab shows "Connecting..." and has a spinning load wheel and it gets stuck like this forever, blank white page and no error or timeout message. If I close Firefox the firefox.exe process gets stuck and has to be manually ended using the task manager before I can open Firefox again. Chrome and Internet Explorer both work fine on all websites and I have already tried the following: Reset Firefox Uninstalled/Re-installed Firefox Clear web cache/cookies/history Ensured 'No Proxy' is set Disabled IPv6 Disable Hardware accell Disabled all extensions and plugins Using default theme Disabled Windows Firewall and setup exception rule for firefox.exe

All Replies (4)

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Read this article .

This may help you . Let us know if this work .

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Did you do a clean reinstall of Firefox and deleted the Firefox program folder?

Did you try to create a new profile instead of resetting Firefox?


It is possible that your security software (firewall, anti-virus) blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.

Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full, unrestricted, access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.

See:

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Hey thanks for replying. It says at the top of that article that it is only if it occurs on some sites, specifically stating "not all". I've already completed all of those steps anyway just in case, but I am unable to load any pages at all, it's like the firefox process crashes and gives up (the program still appears to be responding but will not do anything).

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Thanks Cor-el, tried both of your suggestions. I deleted all my profiles, uninstalled firefox, deleted any associated folders and then re-installed. Same issue. Interestingly, if I try launching firefox directly from the profile tool nothing happens (but firefox.exe is open) and I have to end the process from task manager to be able to open firefox again. The new profile has the exact same issue.

I also tried installing waterfox to see if that made any difference and it seems the issue is happening for that program as well, but Chrome and IE still work perfectly normal. This happened after a PC crash, not an update.

The only firewall/security software I have is Windows firewall and I've tried all variations of on/off and with/without different outbound/inbound rules and seeing as it's happening for both the fire/water fox .exe files I doubt that is the issue. I'm stumped.