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Why does Firefox goes "Not Responding" when I open 'about:crashes'?

  • 6 cavab
  • 2 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by Gryse

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I want to remove the things at the Crash Reports>pending because it is too many. There is 400k files in there and it really slows down the process when I scan my computer for virus/malware. I don't even know how big is the file size of all of those because even the Windows Explorer goes not responding when I select all (Ctrl+A) them and go to Properties. So, I tried entering "about:crashes" into my browser's (Firefox) address bar and after I press enter, it goes not responding. Why does it happen? Are the files at the pending folder safe to be deleted?

I want to remove the things at the Crash Reports>pending because it is too many. There is 400k files in there and it really slows down the process when I scan my computer for virus/malware. I don't even know how big is the file size of all of those because even the Windows Explorer goes not responding when I select all (Ctrl+A) them and go to Properties. So, I tried entering "about:crashes" into my browser's (Firefox) address bar and after I press enter, it goes not responding. Why does it happen? Are the files at the pending folder safe to be deleted?

Chosen solution

Anti Virus software is often configurable with for instance whitelists a black list or both allowing you to restrict what is scanned. Yes you will need to scan whatever Firefox is downloading but not all of its internals such as its list of your crash reports and not the browsing history & bookmarks database.

Year old crash reports would probably nit help with any problem troubleshooting so can be deleted. I often see no crash reports at all. 400 over a year would equate to about one a day 400k sounds ludicrously high and possibly are not even valid reports.

Are you crash free and crash report free now.

Related help articles

You may wish to look in to the AV configuration options. Maybe they have a support forum, but as long as Firefox is no longer crashing or hanging sounds like all will be ok.

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All Replies (6)

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Just to add information: Even when I try to view the Crash Reports via "Help -> Troubleshooting Information", Firefox also goes into a not responding state.

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Just to see what's going on here,   I entered
about:crashes
and it worked like a charm   .........
Try again,   maybe    ?
Good luck   !

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Delete them if you wish. It is probably not a good idea to scan that or other parts of Firefox.

It indicates something is sadly wrong with your Firefox install. Ideally there would be no crashes. You probably need to submit crash reports & sort out what's happening. Posting from a phone or I would have given links.

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John99 said

Delete them if you wish. It is probably not a good idea to scan that or other parts of Firefox. It indicates something is sadly wrong with your Firefox install. Ideally there would be no crashes. You probably need to submit crash reports & sort out what's happening. Posting from a phone or I would have given links.

Okay. My anti-virus/anti-malware automatically scans those though so I can't do anything about that. All of those 400k+ files are from a year ago and they piled up so much and I have just deleted them and now I can open "about:crashes" without Firefox going not responding.

Thanks for the responses!

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Seçilmiş Həll

Anti Virus software is often configurable with for instance whitelists a black list or both allowing you to restrict what is scanned. Yes you will need to scan whatever Firefox is downloading but not all of its internals such as its list of your crash reports and not the browsing history & bookmarks database.

Year old crash reports would probably nit help with any problem troubleshooting so can be deleted. I often see no crash reports at all. 400 over a year would equate to about one a day 400k sounds ludicrously high and possibly are not even valid reports.

Are you crash free and crash report free now.

Related help articles

You may wish to look in to the AV configuration options. Maybe they have a support forum, but as long as Firefox is no longer crashing or hanging sounds like all will be ok.

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Okay, I will try to put the unnecessary things into my AV's whitelist.

Yeah. 400k+ pending crash reports are too much that it really slowed down my laptop that the mouse cursor lagged when I try to do anything to them like deleting them and it took like maybe 2 or more hours to delete all of those.

So far, there's no more problems anymore. Firefox doesn't go not responding anymore when I go to about:crashes and the pending crash reports are all cleared.

Thanks again!