Mozilla FireFox is a great free web browser but at times it can be memory hungry especially when you have lots of plugin’s installed. Recently I’ve been dealing with some computers that would always crash when FireFox was opened. Here is what I do when FireFox crashes the computer.

Disable those useful FireFox Plugins

There are lots of 3rd party plugins available for FireFox but it only takes one to be the cause of computer crashes. If you can open FireFox without your computer crashing try disabling each plugin one at a time to see if any of them are the cause of the conflict. In FireFox click on Tools > Add-Ons > Plugins. You may also want to check what extensions are installed and remove any that are not required.

Uninstall & Reinstall FireFox

One of the first steps you should take is to uninstall and re-install FireFox but before you take this step ensure you backup your FireFox profile.

It’s always good practice to restart the computer after removing any software so make sure to do this when you uninstall FireFox. Download the latest version of FireFox, available here, but before you perform the install disable any anti-virus or security products (just for now).

Install FireFox as normal and now restart the PC. Once the desktop has loaded open FireFox and test. If working normally now import your favourites from your previous profile.

Create a new FireFox profile

For whatever reason a profile could be corrupt causing Firefox unable to start or crash, creating a new profile is one work around. Click on Start > Run and type: firefox.exe –ProfileManager now click ok. This will open the FireFox profile manager allowing you to create a new profile, remember to backup your previous profile before deleting it.

These 3 simple tips should solve the problem of Firefox causing your computer to crash and if they dont then you may need to investigate further to see what else could be causing a conflict with FireFox.