Firefox has recently started coming up by itself when I boot my computer. Why? How do I stop it? thanks
I have checked my startup options and this is not one. Firefox does not start "immediately"; sometimes when I have started a Firefox session quickly after booting up, a second iteration appears (on top of the one in which I am working grrrr). I believe this is related to the last Windows update. It is VERY annoying and usually counter-productive. HELP!
Saafara biñ tànn
I thank you all for your suggestions; none of them turned up anything. However, Microsoft ran an update (in the background, unannounced) and since then this has stopped. ?? 8-@ sigh. Ain't Windows grand?!?
Jàng tontu lii ci fi mu bokk 👍 0All Replies (13)
You can use this tool: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
Have a look at the page to familiarize yourself. It should also come with a help file.
It has a lot of tabs to separate categories, but the Logon tab should cover it for you. Otherwise, you can just use the Everything tab.
You are looking for: HKLM [...] Run (or variations on Run) HKCU [...] Run (or variations on Run) and Scheduled Tasks which are set to start Firefox. If you find any entries, you can just un-tick the box next to it to disable the autostart. It can be re-enabled any time you like.
Note that if you shut down Windows with applications (like Firefox) open, sometimes Windows thinks it is a good thing to restart them at login.
This does not happen during a restart. Firefox starts up (by itself) only during a first boot. Neither Mozilla nor Firefox appears among the enabled startup items under the task manager.
This did not solve the problem. This morning while I viewed the responses to this problem, it did it again. I believe that another process is causing this and was beginning to suspect a Microsoft game which I used for a few days and then deleted, however my husband tells me that he is having the same problem with his Google Chrome browser.
When the browser starts, what is shown?
A blank page (my usual).
Did you check to see if the toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart
preference is set to false
, as suggested by FredMcD?
No, I did not as this is not a case of Firefox coming up because it was left up when I shut down.
Does this also happen if you set another browser as the default browser in case Firefox currently is the default browser ?
You should check to make sure that the toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart
preference is set to false
. Disabling that feature may fix the problem if maybe Firefox or Windows is incorrectly detecting that Firefox was left open.
Saafara yiñ Tànn
I thank you all for your suggestions; none of them turned up anything. However, Microsoft ran an update (in the background, unannounced) and since then this has stopped. ?? 8-@ sigh. Ain't Windows grand?!?
Good to hear.
Ha! I am glad it was fixed for you, then. Sneaky Windows. :D