How to Fix Firefox when it freezes completely after open it?

Question

First time ever today Firefox Version 3.6.13 freezed for me on Ubuntu 10.10 64bit.

I open Firefox normally but then nothing respond on the GUI.The only thing I can do is close it.
When Closed I try to re-open but the application still runs on the background
So I have to kill it manually along with Firefox-bin from the System monitor or kill pid command ..
I don´t know what caused this..I suspect Addons or maybe a proxy setting with polipo.
I also installed DockbarX this morning but it seems ok with Chromium now.

Same story after rebooting,
So I left it as it is to find a solution from AskUbuntu
What can I do now? Where do I check the Logs to locate the problem?
How do I get back my working Firefox without Re-installation ?
Any Suggestion is welcome.

Answer 1

It sounds possible you have a problem with an Add-On causing an issue.

I would suggest attempting to start firefox in safe mode with all your addons etc disabled and see if that stops the application freezing on startup. You can do so by running the following command.

firefox -safe-mode

You should then get a dialog box with several options make sure that Disabled all add-ons is checked and click on Continue in Safe Mode. There are other options there to reset certain settings and features that you can also try if it turns out not to be an Add-On conflict. If that resolves the issue remember safe mode only applies for this session so you will now want to resolve which add-on is causing firefox to freeze.

First while in safe mode go to Tools > Add-Ons and disable all installed Add-Ons there that will make firefox run with no Add-Ons next time it is started in normal mode. At that point close firefox down and start it in normal mode to ensure it still runs without freezing and that all Add-Ons are indeed disabled.

Your next course of action if this is all working still is to attempt to enable each Add-On you have in turn, restarting firefox in between each to identify the Add-On which is causing firefox to freeze note it could also be a combination of Add-Ons so in the event that enabling only one at a time does not cause the symptoms next try these steps.

After running through every Add-On singly start enabling all your Add-Ons again restarting with each you enable until you produce the freeze, at that point you know that the last one you activated is conflicting with one of the others enabled prior. You can then use the safe mode trick to disable the others and try each of those candiates combined with just the last suspect Add-On you enabled to find the responsible pair of Add-Ons.

Answer 2

The cause was indeed a specific add-on. In my case it was an add-on called MEGA which supported downloads from the MEGA cloud drive service. I suspect the reason is the change of the URL.

Answer 3

I had the same problem on Ubuntu 13.04, and I solved it after I uninstalled unity-webapps-facebookapps and unity-webapps-youtube.

Answer 4

Same happened to me on with firefox 40.0

The whole window was grey after startup, even in safe mode, all the time.

The only thing which helped was pressing the (non-visible) reset and OK button after starting firefox in safe mode.

Answer 5

At last!! My Firefox was back very quickly after I input this safemode command

firefox -safe-mode

But after uninstalling completely a couple of addon (Agoogle applications tracker and flash downloaders)
I checked my System Monitor and it was still running heavily (68%)

I was still missing the icing on the cake
Then I remembered this ¨amazing¨ startrek transporter animated persona that I wore from yesterday, this one combine with the ugly add-on made firefox run at 100% and freeze. `

Bad Firefox Personas could slow your overall Operating System performance/speed

Now I´am back to normal 10% system resource with both chromium and Firefox
running at the same time.
I´ĺl post the Firefox console error here:

Answer 6

I deduced it was the last extension I installed, duckduckgo. As much as I love the search engine the extension was not working well with Firefox 56.02 for some reason. Got rid of it and decided to just use it as my default search engine instead. :)