Firefox will not run!

economiser

Switched on my laptop, running XP, this evening, clicked on firefox and got a message that firefox was loading updates. Went through the installation process and it said "do you want to run firefox" (or words to that effect). Clicked "run" and box cleared but nothing happened. Tried to start from desktop icon and hourglass appears for one or two seconds and then nothing. Uninsatlled and reinstalled Firefox to no effect. Did a virus scan and a system restore (now back to v.3.0.1) and tried to start from desktop icon but again no luck. Just a box with the word "Alert" in the blue header band. What can I do?

savemoney

Try reinstalling it perhaps the update corrupted the firefox folder

aliEnRIK

doesnt sound good

QUICK scan with malwarebytes as a 'second opinion'
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Can you uninstall the ADD ONS?

If so do that

Failing that, BACKUP the Bookmarks and change your profile ~
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles
Then import the backup

If that fails im running out of ideas!

JonnyF_2

If you look in the start menu there should be an item labelled "Firefox (Safe Mode)", you should get a box that asks if you want to disable all your addons. Disable them, then continue into firefox. If that works, you should be able to uninstall addons, then restart firefox.

Otherwise - are you sure the alert thing isn't just a normal window - see if you can grab it from the bottom right corner, and resize it - you might be able to read what the alert is.

Jonny

economiser

Thanks for your efforts everyone. Got it going again. It wouldn't uninstall or start in safe mode. The "alert" window couldn't be resized and what I could see of it was blank. In desperation I manually deleted all files in firefox and downloaded again, this time from a different source, and it seems to working OK. Sorry for the panic, should probably have done that before I asked