mzz's dashboard

Huh. If you are using the normal built-in password manager and hit "Never for this site" then that exceptions list is definitely the right place to look (I just double-checked that locally just in case I had lost my mind). Can you try in safe mode (see http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/S... ) just in case one of your extensions is interfering? If you use any external software handling passwords that does not use an extension to integrate into Firefox doublecheck its configuration too.

See http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/U... and specifically the bit about the "exceptions" button on the "security" panel of the preferences dialog.

If it will not uninstall in safe mode and the safe mode you refer to is the operating system's safe mode then it is pretty unlikely for Firefox itself to be causing that, since it does not run on startup (and certainly not in safe mode). But doublecheck it is indeed not listed in the task manager's processes tab, just to be sure. What is the exact error message telling you it is "locked down"? – mzz, on October 03, 2008 03:05

There are at least three things you might have tried to clean up a malfunctioning Firefox installation:

- Reinstall it. This rarely helps: it only overwrites files the installer put in the installation directory, not files added later, and those files rarely get corrupted. It occasionally fixes problems caused by an interrupted or otherwise malfunctioning upgrade.

- Remove the installation directory (c:\program files\mozilla firefox\ normally) and reinstall it. This gets rid of installed plugins, global extensions, and some global components installed by third-party applications (some virus scanners hook into Firefox like this). This helps much more often than just reinstalling does, and does not usually "cost" you much (other than a few plugins you can just reinstall when you find out you need them). If I understand correctly you recently did this.

- Use a fresh profile. The profile is where every file Firefox writes after the installer finishes lives (bookmarks, user settings, user extensions, etc.). If I understand correctly you have not tried doing this after the fresh install in an empty directory. I recommend you do this (on top of the fresh reinstall). You might also want to consider installing in a non-standard location (a very long shot, but your problems are also very weird, so...)

The easiest way to do this is add a second profile by running firefox as "firefox.exe -P -no-remote" (see http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/M... and add -no-remote to make it work if firefox is not currently completely closed). Then add and tell it to use a new profile. Do not add any extensions and plugins, but apart from that use it normally.

If you feel you must use flash, please try to use the flash 10 release candidate (google will tell you where to get it). The flash 9 plugin is known to interfere with the mozilla crash reporter. If you do not really need flash do not install the plugin.

I am also curious about the security software you use (not sure if you mentioned it here, but you did mention it on irc and/or live chat). It restarting the system for you is somewhat unusual. Do you know what software is doing this?

It is very unlikely the changes between Firefox 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 were relevant to your problem (the only change in there was related to saved passwords containing non-english characters and would not crash, just cause saved passwords to stop working). But it is quite possible reinstalling or changing Firefox.exe helped in some other way (if something external is interfering).

I'm glad you're getting "faster and more answers from here" on irc.mozilla.org #firefox on top of the "only" help from Thomas here on getsatisfaction :)

How to get past that message is documented here:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/F...

This often happens when Windows crashes badly while Firefox is running, but has some other causes. See that page. – mzz, on October 03, 2008 02:25