Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox and any leftover program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps one by one:

1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu) and confirm all upcoming messages.
3. Now, uninstall Firefox by following the steps mentioned in the Uninstall Firefox article.

IMPORTANT: On Windows, the uninstaller has the option to remove your personal data and settings. Make sure that you do not check this option; otherwise all of your bookmarks, passwords, extensions, user customizations and other Firefox user profile data will be removed from your computer.

After uninstalling Firefox on Windows, delete the "Mozilla Firefox" program folder, located by default in one of these locations:

• (On 32-bit Windows) C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
• (On 64-bit Windows) C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox

1. Go to the Windows Start menu and click on "Computer".
2. In the Explorer window that opens, double click Local Disk (C:) to open the C:\ drive.
3. Find the "Program Files (x86)" folder or "Program Files" folder.
   • On 32-bit Windows, double-click the Program Files folder to open it.
   • On 64-bit Windows, you will see a "Program Files (x86)" folder AND a "Program Files" folder. Open the Program Files (x86) folder.
4. Look for a Mozilla Firefox folder. If you find one, right-click it and select Delete and confirm that you want to move the folder to the Recycle Bin.

Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:

1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

Please report back to see if this helped you!

If files already have been downloaded then remove the files in the updates and updates\0 folder.

You can also delete active-update.xml and possibly updates.xml (this will clear the update history).

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Updates_reported_when_running_newest_version
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Software_Update (Software Update not working properly)

XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates
(%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox)

Windows Vista and later:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox\updates
(%LOCALAPPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox)

Thanks for the replies folks. I resolved the problem by renaming the Mozilla Firefox folder as Old Mozilla Firefox, then going back to Add/remove programs to remove the item that looked like an installer. I thn restarted the PC and re-installed Firefox 17 from scratch. It worked perfectly. The user's bookmarks were even retained.

delete the file mozilla.moz.delete something like that from the dirictory c:\program files\mozilla firefox