Can not kill Firefox process (windows vista) ?

[lbdyck]

I've read the various forum entries and articles about Firefox hangs, etc. and have tried many of the recommendations that had someone report a success all without any success.

I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and the most current FF 3 available.

It seems whenever I close FF (via the X or file-exit or via addon restart) 90% plus of the time it will not restart and I will get a message that it is already running. I have tried TaskManager to kill it without success and tried the sysinternals pskill with the same lack of success. The only solution that works is to shutdown and restart windows.

help please

[DanRaisch]

You report reading forum entries and articles but do not say which ones, so it's kind of hard to know what to refer you to. Have you tried running Firefox in Mozilla Safe Mode?
( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode ) or have you created a new profile and tried running that with no extensions installed to confirm that the problem is not present in that mode? ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows )

[lbdyck]

I have not tried safe mode but have (a) disabled all extensions and (b) created a new profile

thx

[DanRaisch]

If the problem exists in a new profile, try the following --

Close all applications and reboot the computer.
Delete any downloaded or partially downloaded installer files.
Clear the browser cache (of whatever browser you are using to download FF) and the Windows Temp directory.
Delete the directory C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
Shutdown any anti-virus software you are running.
Download a new copy of the full installer from www.mozilla.com
Run the installer.
Restart the anti-virus program.

[lbdyck]

I have un-installed and deleted the entire profile directory and program directory, then reinstalled and have added the extensions/themes back one at a time. Things are working well now after a hang after enabling and using Colorful Tabs extension for a bit. After disabling it things have been stable for now.

[lbdyck]

Seems the issue isn't with Color tabs either. Just a few minutes ago, prior to this reboot, FF got into a state where all web pages that I clicked on were in a loading state. I could start Chrome and IE and they would surf just fine but FF would not load any pages. File->Exit closed it but left firefox.exe running requiring a reboot to resolve.

This would seem to point to an issue with the network interface in FF.

[DanRaisch]

When you created the new profile did you try running it without adding any extensions and without making any changes to config settings?

[lbdyck]

yes and had zero issues - so i started to add extensions back one at a time

[Guest]

I have a problem, while not eart-shattering, is annoying. I turn on BitComet when I go to bed. In the morning I turn it off but FF cannot get the band width available. The only thing that fixes it is to re-boot. I have tried memory programmes but they do not help. Any suggestions?

[dickvl]

Which security software do you have?

You can use EnumProcess written by trolly, a moderator on this forum, to check which security software is running (firewalls and anti-virus).
More info on trolly's website: http://www.trolly.homepage.t-online.de/tools.html

[lbdyck]

I am, and have been running, zonealarm security suite. Disabling it does not affect this issue.

[DanRaisch]

How did you disable the firewall? Often "disabling" only effects the user interface but leaves the blocking function in place. See this article --
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firewalls

[lbdyck]

i shutdown zonealarm.

note I also have this issue on my work laptop which has no firewall (inside a corporate network) running xp pro sp2 and mcafee a/v only.

[xed]

How did you disable the firewall? Often "disabling" only effects the user interface but leaves the blocking function in place. See this article --
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firewalls

I was having a conflict between a buggy firewall and another program that mimicked a hardware problem, nothing short of uninstalling it and deleting its' registry entries solved the problem, good to go now.

[Guest]

It sure would be nice if FF could resolve this issue. When FF is shutdown via the X of File->Exit or even close then all of its processes should be stopped. There should never be a reason for it to hang this way.