Firefox on Windows 7 fails to update without any error messages
I'm having an issue with updating Firefox 62.0.2 -> 62.0.3 on Win7. I updated through Help>About menu, and it downloads, but when it goes to restart, it does nothing...no error messages either. As far as I can tell, Firefox spawns updater.exe which immediately quits. After this Firefox no longer appears to work, and the only way I can get it to start again is to delete the AppData/Local/Mozilla/updates/ folder which prevents updater.exe from running.
The same thing happened going from 62.0.0 to 62.0.2, and I ended up downloading Firefox from the website and re-installing. I really prefer not to do this every time there's an update. Previously, updating through Firefox itself was fine and I never had any issues.
I used SysInternal's ProcMon to monitor file access and the only thing I see updater.exe do is load some DLL files and then immediately close itself. Also, it fails to find api-ms-win-core-fibers-l1-1-1.DLL, api-ms-win-core-localization-l1-2-1.DLL, and api-ms-win-appmodel-runtime-l1-1-2.DLL. Without any error messages or logs, missing DLLs is the only thing I can think of. Problem is I don't know how to find those DLLs (doing a web search for missing DLLs leads to all kind of bad sites). Also, I ran SFC /scannow (system file check) to check for corrupted DLLs but it didn't find any problems.
Some other info about my setup and Firefox install, that could potentially affect things:
- I use mklink to symbolically link AppData\Roaming\Mozilla from my C: drive (SDD) to D: drive (regular HDD), but I've never had an issue with this. Updater.exe never gets to the point of reading any files from there though, so I doubt that's the problem.
- I block outgoing connections in Windows Firewall with a list of application exceptions (firefox.exe and updater.exe are allowed). If I set this back to (the default) allowing all outgoing connection, updating Firefox still fails, so I don't think it's a network or firewall problem.
- I set various browser settings through a user.js file, but I've tried creating a fresh new profile before updating, and it still didn't work, so I don't believe any of my settings are affecting it.
- Windows 7 is completely up to date.
- My antivirus software, Microsoft Security Essentials, is also updated, and I have no viruses or malware.
All Replies (6)
download the latest version and install it without deleting firefox, just install it and it will update.
Yes, of course I can download the latest version from the web site and re-install over the existing install, but I don't want to have to do that each time there's an update. I want Firefox to be able to update itself. I would be forced to turn off updates in Firefox's settings since that method of updating renders Firefox unable to start itself.
I need to find a way to find out why updater.exe is failing without displaying an error or logging any messages anywhere.
fire fox update error:
auto updates:
about updater.exe ,
make sure your security software not blocking updater.exe from accesing internet.
None of those support articles helped. Here's what I did:
- disabled antivirus
- firewall reset to allow all connections
- rebooted
- made new firefox profile (firefox.exe -p)
- started firefox as Administrator with new profile
- help>about to check for updates
- firefox downloaded update for 62.0.3
- clicked "Restart to update Firefox" button
- firefox closes itself
- checked process list (for all users), and firefox.exe doesn't exist, nor does updater.exe
- started firefox again as Administrator, and nothing happens, no window appears, no errors, no nothing
- checked process list (for all users), and firefox.exe doesn't exist, nor does updater.exe
Once again, the problem is that updater.exe essentially does nothing but close itself. I never even get to see Firefox or any sort of window or popup error message or anything. Monitoring file access also shows no log or anything is created by updater.exe.
ok , try to disconnect internet connection before installing firefox, and if it didn't help, try to install it in windows safe mode.
ans see this answer about updater.exe :
Tried disconnecting internet and updating, and I also tried the windows safe mode with networking, but neither of those worked.
Fortunately I did manage to update Firefox manually though by following the steps on here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Software_Update:Manually_Installing_a_MAR_file
This leads me to believe that Firefox is incorrectly sending command line arguments to updater.exe. Unfortunately it also doesn't solve my problem, but at least I can install the update manually if needed.
Here's what I did, in case anyone finds themselves in my situation:
- In Firefox, go to Help>About and let it download the update
- Press the restart Firefox button (at this point updater.exe runs but doesn't work correctly for me)
- Create a folder called C:\app-update
- Copy update.mar from C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Mozilla\updates\308046B0AF4A39CB\updates\0\ (numbers and username will be different) to the clipboard (Ctrl-c)
- Paste update.mar to C:\app-update (Ctrl-v)
- Copy C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\updater.exe and updater.ini to the clipboard (Ctrl-c)
- Paste updater.exe and updater.ini to C:\app-update (Ctrl-v)
- Run Command Console (cmd.exe) as an Admin (ctrl-shift-click the icon in your start menu, or right-click and Run as Administrator)
- Change directory to app-update: cd c:\app-update
- Run the updater with the following: updater.exe c:\app-update "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox"
- If the previous step didn't work for some reason, try redirecting standard output and standard error to a file with the following: updater.exe c:\app-update "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" > log.txt 2>&1 ...and then view log.txt
- You should now see a progress bar pop up as Firefox applies the update
- Open the text file C:\app-update\update.status and hopefully it should say "success."
- Open the text file C:\app-update\update.log to see the results if you're curious or if something went wrong.
- If everything was successful, delete the folder C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Mozilla\updates
- Start Firefox