In this article, we’ll see the most common reasons why Firefox stops working, and also what you can do to solve this irksome issue.
There is nothing more frustrating than your browser giving up on you and crashing out of the blue right when you’re completely invested in visiting a website, watching a video or – and this is the worst – after you spent hours and hours working on a document online and fatally forgot to save every so often. Firefox is no exception, it is susceptible to crashes as well because no browser is perfect.
When your browser crashes, you can – given the option – wait for the application to figure out what to do and hope that it restarts soon. But if it doesn’t, you’ll probably need to close all of your tabs and restart the browser yourself.
To avoid this unpleasant circumstance, there are some preventive measures you can take; let’s find out what they are.
Here’s what to do when Firefox keeps crashing
1) Update everything you can
UPDATE FIREFOX: every new, updated version of Firefox includes stability improvements, and this is due to reports of crashes from the users. When a web page causes the browser to crash, it could just be that Firefox can’t cope with something on it because it’s out of date, or there’s a bug that the web page triggers. So, make sure you’re using the most recent version of Firefox.
UPDATE FLASH PLUGIN: the Adobe Flash plugin you have installed might be obsolete. Since this plugin is pretty spread across the Web and it helps with correctly viewing pages, it’s important to keep it up to date.
UPDATE INTERNET SECURITY SOFTWARE: check if the navigation softwares and tools in use are updated: firewall, antivirus programs, anti-spyware programs, etc.
2) Check your hardware
In the case that Firefox crashes repeatedly, check for the integrity of your computer’s RAM to see if it showcases any fallacy by downloading a specific app.
3) Get help from Mozilla’s Community Support forum
If none of these measures work, you’ll have to get the crash report IDs for your most recent submitted crash reports to notify Mozilla’s volunteers and get some help. Follow these instructions:
- open Firefox (use Safe Mode if the regular browser doesn’t work at all)
- in the address bar, type about:crashes and click Return: a page with all submitted and not submitted Firefox crash reports will appear
- if you find recent unsubmitted crash reports, click Submit for each one of them and reload the page
- copy the Report IDs for submitted crash reports (they start with bp-) and attach them to your question for the Community Support group
What if you’re not able to open neither Firefox nor Safe Mode Firefox? Do this:
- click the Finder icon in the dock
- then, on the menu bar, click Go menu, hold down the option or alt key and select Library. A window will open containing your Library folder
- now, open the “Application Support”, the “Firefox”, the “Crash Reports” and the “submitted” folders
- in the resulting folder, you’ll find a text file for each crash report you submitted. Use the View menu and arrange them by date to determine the newest file
- finally, double-click on it to open it.