That must be pretty annoying   !

Would you please take a look at this article, in particular the section :

Reset actions for all content types

Any good   ?

I looked at the article, and the specified section, but the entire thing left me wanting.

I have made no changes, no additions, no updates, no alterations of any kind in the few preceding days before this began occurring, and the browser behaved as it is supposed to, normally, without committing this action. I include in this statement, the certainty that I have no infections, no malware, no virus, nothing of the kind.

So, while I understand there is a generic "fix" for this situation, two things come to mind. First, why should something this obviously wrong suddenly occur without any intervention on my part, and second why do I have to change the way I use the browser to make up for something that I neither caused nor expected?

This is not the first time Firefox has suddenly gone berserk. Two months ago, it somehow overrode my setting to not update itself without my intervention, and updated, thereby losing all of my bookmarks, passwords, history, settings, add-ons, and everything else. It was exactly like opening someone else's computer, with a totally different program. There are other issues that have happened before then, that have never been resolved to my satisfaction.

Fortunately, I had a several-month old backup and was able to restore some of my previous information, but I lost all of my saved passwords, all of my history, and some other very pertinent information, all without my consent.

Some things I will never do: I will never "reset" Firefox. I'll uninstall it and go to Chrome first. I will never go through any of the unnecessarily-complex "fool with your profile" steps. I will uninstall and go to Chrome before I ever do that again. I never have gotten my "profile" back to where it once was, and doubt that I ever will. I'm simply not qualified, nor do I possess the knowledge-base to fiddle with all those settings.

Something else happened. Something outside of my involvement. Whatever that may be, it has to come to a screeching halt.

And my issue is still not resolved. I can't use my browser the way I am used to using it, because something else has interfered.

Thanks, but this puts all the onus on me to fix someone else's issues.

Any other solutions that don't require me to do all the work?

You don't have to reset Firefox   ! What that section, as mentioned in the article, tells you to do is very simple : 3-bar menu => at the bottom of the dropdown click on the   '?'   => Troubleshooting Information => Open Folder. Close Firefox. In the folder you remove 'mimeTypes.rdf. '

Personally I avoid using or normally asking others to use Reset/Refresh. There are usually better solutions.

Most of what you are concerned about and may have lost is in your Firefox Profile so it is prudent to back that up on a regular basis. Firefox actually tribes to automatically and intelligently back up bookmarks now. Probably the only people with bookmarks issues where they can not recover recent listings are people busing Firefox Sync. Sync ocaisionally plays havoc with bookmarks. Refresh should not cause bookmarks to be lost. Unfortunately there are no magic fixes, all we may do is suggest what YOU may do to resolve issues.

I will leave you in the capable hands of Happy 112.

The hundreds of tabs sounds like some odd mixup causing Firefox to loop endlessly treating itself as an external resource.

Note that you should never select Firefox to open a file if you get the "Open with" dialog. Firefox should display PDF files with the built-in PDF Viewer if you have selected "Preview in Firefox" for Portable Document Format (PDF) in "Options/Preferences -> Applications".