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Why does Firefox update search paralyze web connectivity?

  • 5 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by ethantb

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Running the latest Firefox (51.0.1) in Windows 10. Every time Firefox searches for updates, not only will Firefox not open any web page, neither will Chrome (Firefox is my default). This a new phenomenon since a recent update. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Running the latest Firefox (51.0.1) in Windows 10. Every time Firefox searches for updates, not only will Firefox not open any web page, neither will Chrome (Firefox is my default). This a new phenomenon since a recent update. Any suggestions? Thanks.

All Replies (5)

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How are you checking for updates?

Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar. Then Help > About Firefox will tell you what version have and check for updates.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-firefox-latest-version

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Thanks for the reply. The problem is that Firefox is checking for updates automatically, and seems to get stuck - sometimes will continue 15 min.

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Let’s do a full clean re-install; Download Firefox For All languages And Systems {web link} Save the file. Then Close Firefox.

Using your file browser, open the Programs Folder on your computer.

Windows: C:\Program Files C:\Program Files (x86)

Mac: Open the "Applications" folder.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-download-and-install-firefox-mac

Linux: Check your user manual. If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder Firefox in your home directory.

Do Not remove the profiles folder.

Look for, and rename any Mozilla or Firefox program folders by adding .old to them. Do not rename the Mozilla Thunderbird folder if there is one.

After rebooting the computer, run a registry scanner if you have one. Then run the installer. If all goes well, remove the OLD folders when you are done.


If there is a problem, start your Computer in safe mode and try again.

Starting The Computer In Safe Mode;
Free Online Encyclopedia

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That sounds like a problem with other (security) software if it affects other browsers as well.


Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support to see if that has effect in case security software is causing problems.


Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.

Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

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Thanks, cor-el, Tried your suggestion, and it did get rid of a lot of stuff, but I'm still having the same problem. Will try the reinstall.