How to stop Quantum upgrade

[TikkiRo]

I'm one of those who absolutely categorically HATES Quantum only because I lose all my best extensions - so I want to stay reverted to 56b or thereabouts at least for now. And yes, I appreciate the risks etc, but nonetheless, I'd rather risk those than cope with what Quantum offers (or rather doesn't in my case). And again, yes, I also appreciate it's not Mozilla's fault that extension owners aren't willing to update their extensions.

BUT all I want is to have my 56b version yet I find myself in an endless loop of uninstalling Quantum, reinstalling 56b, opening it and sorting out a few extensions, restarting and before I can blink - BOOM, there's Quantum back front & centre yet again. I've got the box ticked to not install updates but ask - does it comply - Never!!

So far, I've uninstalled every trace of firefox right down to the Registry, opened up nice clean versions and then used Mozbackup to restore a 56b working profile which was saved weeks ago before my 1st Quantum overwrite started so I know it's fine. Yet I still can't seem to stop this insistence on the update happening without my asking.

Is this a new thing that Firefox are doing maybe or am I missing something in my setup? Would it likely be any different if I tried installing in either Windows safe mode or Firefox safe mode - is that even possible>

I'm disabled hence my hunger to hold on to apps that help me enjoy browsing and more and my desire to maintain the older FF version for a bit longer if possible.

Anyone any suggestions?

[kerft]

Download the installer for 56. Disconnect from the internet. Install 56, run it. In the options set to no updates. Then close it, then you can turn on the internet.

[TikkiRo]

LOL they sure don't make it easy sometimes do they . But thanks for that - stupidly never thought of it.

[James]

BUT all I want is to have my 56b version yet I find myself in an endless loop of uninstalling Quantum, reinstalling 56b, opening it and sorting out a few extensions, restarting and before I can blink - BOOM, there's Quantum back front & centre yet again. I've got the box ticked to not install updates but ask - does it comply - Never!!

Note if a version you find has a b# on end then it is a version that is or was on Beta channel. If updates are allowed then you would get updated to the current 67.0 on Beta channel which is 67.0b18 (b eighteen) and you appear to be posting with 67.0 which is one Beta channel. A version on Beta channel can get say nine to fourteen plus builds in QA testing. The 56.0b# for example had twelve Beta builds.

Fx 52.9.0esr is much more current with security fixes compared to the old Fx 56.0.2 or more so a random 56.0b# Beta build.

Fx 52.9.0esr was Released on June 26, 2018 while the Fx 56.0.2 was Released earlier on October 26, 2017.

[TikkiRo]

Ahh James - thank you SO much for taking the time to explain that - seems like despite having used Firefox since its inception pretty much, I've LOTS yet to learn about it Ironically I certainly have plenty of 52 profiles floating about still so once I backup and take note of various things I'll lose by reverting back that far, I'll have a go at doing that tomorrow and see how I fare. Kerft's suggestion has at least restored me to a happier place for now but certainly not keen to be foolish about security so again, thanks for the info

[therube]

Changing the "update channel", in channel-prefs.js, to some nonsense value can help too.

{programfiles or whereever}\Firefox52.ESR\defaults\pref\channel-prefs.js


From:
pref("app.update.channel", "esr");

To:
pref("app.update.channel", "IDONTWANTUPDATES");

[TikkiRo]

Perfect - so far so good on all counts. Thanks again so much for that invaluable help. I'm gutted in some ways as I always updated Firefox regularly but just find the Quantum version endlessly working against me. Sadly neither Chrome nor Edge have such good extensions either but some day I'll no doubt have to just bite the bullet & find alternatives someway or other.

[dfoulkes]

TikkiRo
I too hated to lose my pre-Quantum ESR version of Firefox... I had it set just the way I wanted...but, in the end I did finally upgraded to Quantum-ESR and though I ended up losing a couple of really good exts. what I have now works very good. A couple of things that I did in the end.... First was to install the latest (portable) version of ESR and in that version played with it and installed exts. that worked for me... Plus, in reading a number of posts around here there were lots of really smart CSS people who posted ways to 'fix' stuff so that some things worked better in the absence of my fav-extensions.
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

The second thing that I did was even though I 'upgraded' my old ESR to the new one it ended up leaving a ton of prefs laying around in the file... so later I took the time to create a new profile with the clean prefs file and built up that new profile to a point of my liking...then moved over my data files... it took less time that I had anticipated.

My biggest loss was to not have TMP... that was an excellent extension.

[lovemyfoxy]

What else can you copy over to the portable besides bookmarks and history? Did you get the menu bars back?

[TikkiRo]

Hiya
I gave up fighting with it in the end and instead have made the switch to Waterfox - a superb almost identical clone of Firefox which has proven to be so successful I doubt I'll ever return to FF sadly after being with it from the outset . Thanks for your interest nonetheless