Three Tips for Help with Firefox Problems.

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Lot of people are regular user of the Firefox browser? Here there are three useful tips that might come in handy if you run into problems with the browser.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode

Sometimes you have a problem with Firefox crashing or misbehaving. This could be caused by an extension and there is a quick way to check if this is the source of a problem. Firefox can be started in what is known as “Safe Mode”. This is not the same as Windows safe mode but is a way to run Firefox without any extensions. In older versions of Firefox, Safe Mode was an option in the Start menu but for current versions you start Safe Mode by holding down the Shift key when you double-click the Firefox icon.

The dialog shown below will open. This dialog provides the option of making permanent changes in Firefox or continuing to a temporary Safe Mode. To go to Safe Mode without making any permanent changes, click the button “Continue in Safe Mode” (shown outlined in the figure below). Extensions will be temporarily disabled but plug-ins such as Flash will still be active.

You can also get to Safe Mode by opening the drop-down Firefox menu, placing your mouse pointer on Help and clicking “Restart with Add-ons Disabled”

More about using Safe Mode can be found at this Mozilla link.

How to get troubleshooting information

Firefox provides a way to see an extensive collection of information about your browser setup and configuration that can be helpful If you have problems. To access the troubleshooting information page, open the fly-out Help menu and click “Troubleshooting Information”.

Another way to open Troubleshooting Information is to enter “about:support” (without quotes) in the Firefox address bar.

Find your profile folder

Firefox stores critical information about the browser and its configuration in a location called the “Profile Folder”. If you ever need to go there, it isn’t so easy to find by the usual method. It has a long path and is a hidden folder but there are several quicker ways to get to it.

One way has been shown in a previous tip. The Troubleshooting Page discussed above contains an entry “Profile Directory” with a button “Open containing folder”.

Another way is to use the keyboard shortcut Winkey+R to open the Run box and then enter:
    %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

A description of the contents of the Profile folder is given at this Mozilla link. Keeping a backup copy of this folder is a good idea.

Posted in: Blog, HowTo, Mozilla