If you’re having trouble resizing an oversized window:

• Enable JavaScript. (Firefox: Tools -> Options -> Content -> Enable JavaScript; Mozilla Suite: Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts & Plug-ins -> Enable JavaScript for -> Navigator)
• Make sure scripts can resize windows. (Firefox: Tools -> Options -> Content -> Advanced JavaScript settings. Mozilla Suite: Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Scripts & Plug-ins).
• Type: javascript:top.resizeTo(640,480) into the Location Bar and press Enter.

If after following these steps, new windows still start up too big, you may have a corrupt localstore.rdf.

Retrieved from “http://kb.mozillazine.org/Resizing_oversize_window“

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If your Firefox window shakes / jitters / bounces / jumps, try the following solutions:

• Update Firefox to the latest version.
• If your Bookmarks Toolbar is showing but it does not contain any bookmarks, add a bookmark to it or hide it (View -> Toolbars -> uncheck Bookmarks Toolbar)
• If you put your Bookmarks Toolbar Items on a different toolbar (such as the File/Edit menubar) and have hidden the Bookmarks Toolbar itself, remove the Bookmarks Toolbar Items (View -> Toolbars -> Customize -> drag the Bookmarks Toolbar Items back to the Customize Toolbar window -> click Done). Now, replace the Bookmarks Toolbar Items to where you want it.
• If you recently switched to a different Firefox theme, switch back to the default one (Tools -> Themes -> Firefox (default) -> Use Theme)
• If you are using a non-standard OS theme, try switching back to the default one
• A user reports problem was fixed by turning off the 3rd party application “Windows Blinds” (MozillaZine forum topic).
• if you have the extension eQuake Alert, disable the option to shake the screen when a new earthquake is reported.
• Try the standard diagnostic

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Extensions and themes are designed to work with certain Firefox versions. Attempts to install incompatible extensions will result in an error alert saying, “<Extension Name> could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox <x.x.x.x>. (<Extension name> will only work with Firefox <x.x.x.x>)”. Advanced users can disable extension compatibility checking in Firefox 2 and above by adding the boolean preference extensions.checkCompatibility and setting it to false. Use with caution. [1]

[edit]

Software installation disabled

Websites are only allowed to prompt you to install an extension or theme if you have the functionality enabled and if you have allowed that specific site to do it.

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Enabling software installs

Some users may have disabled the software installation option based on security issues which have since been resolved [2]. To re-enable:

Firefox 1.5: If you previously disabled this option and then updated to Firefox 1.5, the disabled setting will be carried over but the option to enable software installation will no longer exist in the user interface. If you see a yellow message bar that says “Software installation is currently disabled. Click Edit Options… to enable it and try again.” you will need to:

1. Type about:config in the Location Bar and hit enter.
2. Type xpi in the Filter box and find xpinstall.enabled in the list.
3. Make sure its value is set to true (double-click will toggle).[3]

Firefox 2: The yellow message bar says, “Software installation is currently disabled. Click Enable and try again”. Just click the Enable button on the right side of the message bar.

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Allowing the site to install

When a site that’s not allowed to prompt you to install software attempt to do so, you’ll receive a yellow bar that says “Firefox prevented this site (www.example.com) from asking you to install software on your computer.” To allow the site to prompt:

1. Click the Edit Options on the yellow bar
2. Click Allow
3. Click Close

Then click on the install link of the extension or theme again.

[edit]

Unsecured updating

Firefox 3 and above: Starting in Firefox 3, if an add-on does not provide a secure method of auto-updating then, by default, Firefox will refuse to install the add-on. If you have add-ons already installed that are insecure in this way, they will be automatically disabled. [4] Add-ons from AMO and other secured sites are not a problem; for add-ons that do provide a secure updating method, advanced users can add the preference extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set it to false (not recommended). See this article and bug 378216 for more information.

[edit]

Downloaded theme or extension will not install

Some web sites offer the option to download a theme or extension instead of installing it. The downloaded file will have a “.jar” or “.xpi” extension. Do not try to open these files directly. After the download is complete, drag the downloaded .jar or .xpi file icon from the desktop (or other location) and drop it onto an open Firefox “Add-ons” window (”Extensions” or “Themes” window in Firefox 1.5 and earlier).

Note that the installation may fail with no user feedback if software installation is disabled (see above).

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Reset printer

As a first step, reset the selected printer in your Firefox preferences:

1. Type about:config in the Location Bar and press Enter. A list of preferences will appear.
2. Find the preference print.print_printer (Note: this preference is missing in Firefox profiles where you’ve never used the printer.)
3. Right-click (context-click) that preference and select “Reset”
4. Restart Firefox.

If you get the warning dialog, “Printing failed when starting the document” and if the print.print_printer preference has no printer shown, either you don’t have a printer selected, or Firefox doesn’t know it is installed on your system.

[edit]

Does not print to paper at all

If you are having a problem with Firefox not printing to paper at all, and you don’t receive a warning dialog:

• Press {Ctrl + P} on the keyboard and make sure that you don’t have Print to file selected under Printer > Comment:
• Make sure that your correct printer is selected at Printer > Name:. (You might be “printing” to a Program such as Adobe PDF or Intuit.)

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Prints to a small portion of the page

If you are having a problem with Firefox printing only on a small portion of the page:

• Press {Ctrl + P} on the keyboard and verify the correct Printer is selected,
• Click the Properties button and look at the Paper tab and Layout tab (or whatever your particular printer brand calls those items):
  • Paper: Is the correct size selected? (usually 8.5″x11″ or A4). Is the Orientation correct? Is the Printable Area correct?
  • Layout: -Is Reduce/Enlarge check-marked? It shouldn’t be. Is Multi-Page check-marked? It shouldn’t be unless that is what you want

[edit]

Delayed printing or freezes when trying to print

Check your printer Properties -> Advanced section to make sure that print spooling is turned on.

[edit]

Does not print entire page content

If images are cut off, click “File -> Print Preview” and, on the toolbar, set “Scale:” to “Shrink to fit”, if a different setting is shown. [2]

If part of the text is cut off, try setting “Scale:” to 100% in Print Preview. If that doesn’t help, try selecting the Monospace font to something other than “Courier” or “Courier New” in your Firefox options (”Content / Fonts & Colors -> Advanced”) and UNcheck the option to allow pages to use their own fonts. This may be necessary on certain web pages that specify Courier fonts since those fonts may cause printing problems in Firefox [3]

When trying to print web pages with text areas, if the text area contains a misspelled word and spell checking is enabled, all the following content of the text area will not be printed. You can right-click in the text area and uncheck “Spell check this field” to turn off spell checking temporarily while you print. [4]

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Firefox may fail to open after installing or updating the McAfee SiteAdvisor Firefox extension [2] or after an update to McAfee software that includes the SiteAdvisor component [3]. According to this SiteAdvisor support article, the problem occurs because of a conflict between SiteAdvisor and automatic proxy configuration scripts in Firefox. Either end the firefox process that remains in memory, start Firefox in Safe Mode and uninstall the SiteAdvisor extension from the Tools -> Extensions window or follow the workaround given in the SiteAdvisor support article. If SiteAdvisor is installed as part of a McAfee software package such as McAfee Internet Security Suite, you can selectively remove just the SiteAdvisor component using the McAfee uninstaller, e.g., via Windows Add/Remove programs. [4].

[edit]

Windows-specific problems

[edit]

Firefox does not start after installing the WinAmp Toolbar

Firefox may not start after installing the WinAmp media player, if the toolbar option is selected during installation. [5] [6] You will need to Start Firefox in Safe Mode then uninstall the WinAmp Toolbar via the Firefox Add-ons manager (”Tools -> Addons -> Extensions”).

[edit]

Application fails to start because js3250.dll or other program files are missing

If you see message, This application has failed to start because js3250.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem. you must reinstall Firefox (or other Mozilla browser) and check your system for malware. See the article Application fails to start because js3250.dll was not found for more information.

[edit]

“The program must close to allow a previous installation attempt to complete. Please restart.” on Vista

If you are receiving this message when attempting to start Firefox and a restart has no effect, delete the “xpicleanup.dat” file, located in the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox folder. If you have problems finding or deleting this file, follow these steps:

1. Restart your system, or if you know how, terminate all Firefox and xpicleanup processes with Task Manager.
2. Go to “Start -> Start Search” and type in %APPDATA%.
3. From there, navigate to Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
4. Delete the file “xpicleanup.dat“.

You should now be able to start Firefox. [7] [8]

If the problem persists, restart the system or use Task Manager again, then delete the “xpicleanup.exe” file in the Firefox installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox). [9]

[edit]

“Error opening file for writing…” on Vista

Firefox may require you to be logged in as an administrator. As a workaround, to launch Firefox, right-click the icon and choose “Run As Administrator”.[10][11]

[edit]

Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey fails to start

If you’ve tried running the mozilla.EXE or seamonkey.EXE file directly and you also tried running the Profile Manager, without success, the problem is located within Gecko Runtime Environment (GRE), which means you’ll have to reinstall Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey so that new GRE files are created. Solution:

• Download the Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey offline installer but do not install it yet.
• Uninstall Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey using Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs (if both are installed, uninstall both).
• Restart the computer.
• (Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey 1.0.x) Delete the C:\Program Files\Common Files\mozilla.org\GRE\ folder ….THIS IS IMPORTANT!
• Delete the leftover \Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla or \Program Files\mozilla.org\SeaMonkey folder if it exists, and all its contents (save your Plugins folder, if you wish, to a backup location).
• With your antivirus program disabled and all other programs closed, reinstall Mozilla Suite or SeaMonkey.

Ref: ilias.ca (Related bug reports: bug 195600 and bug 211694).

[edit]

Linux-specific problems

[edit]

Ownership

If you used “sudo” to install Firefox and it starts at the end of the install process and runs when you log in as root but fails to run as a normal user, then check the ownership of “$HOME/.mozilla” and subdirectories. The symptoms are that you won’t get any error messages, and Firefox will exit with a value of 1. The ownership of “$HOME/.mozilla” and subdirectories may be set to “root:root”, and you will need to execute

chown -R <username>:<usergroup> $HOME/.mozilla

at the command line to get Firefox to work (Firefox 1.0.x).

Similarly other users on the system may need their “.mozilla” folder ’s permissions changed using “chown” as shown above.

[edit]

Fedora 4 libstdc++

When you run from the console window the command /{path to download location}/firefox/firefox you may see

/usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries:  libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directories

On Fedora 4, you need to install libstdc++ by running yum install /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5. After running this, rpm -qf /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 should print compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-47.fc4.

[edit]

“/lib/i686/libc.so.6: version ‘GLIBC_2.3′ not found required by /{path to download location}/firefox/libxpcom.core.so”

If you see

/lib/i686/libc.so.6: version 'GLIBC_2.3' not found required by /{path to download location}/firefox/libxpcom.core.so

or something similar when starting Firefox, then the library is not new enough to support Firefox 1.5 and possibly previous versions. Updating GLIBC is not advised as other applications depend upon it. If possible, migrate to a newer Linux distribution with an updated version of GLIBC.

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