Help with Firefox 3

[PVnRT]

OK, their worthless fucking support forum decided to eat my post, so I'm going to ask it here.

What do I do to get 3.0.1 to quit freezing up whenever I load flash animation? YouTube just causes it to freeze up, as does any site with an embedded video in it.

Yes, I know about FlashBlock, and would be happy to use it, were it not for the fact that Firefox will not install any kind of add-in or extension. Just download, then freeze.

[IDemo]

1. I'm running 3.0.1 and haven't had this happen

I have had to reload YouTube pages after clicking on the FlashBlock arrow and having it fail to load the player, though. This had happened many times, but usually only takes one page refresh to fix. Don't know if it's a FF, FlashBlock, or YouTube problem.

By chance, do you have JavaScript disabled, or are you running 'NoScript' (doesn't sound like it, if you can't load any add-ons)?

[PVnRT]

2. JavaScript is enabled

I double-checked that fix from the Mozilla FAQ.

Doing some registry cleanup has Firefox running a little better; still crashes when I hit the play button on an embedded video. Addons install now, but don't show up anywhere as habing been installed.

[IDemo]

3. Do your add-ons appear in the 'tools/add-ons' window?

If so, are they enabled? Other than this, I don't know what might be causing them not to appear.

It looks like others are experiencing FF crashes with flash, even a few on 'nix' systems (Linux & BSD). If you haven't already, you may want to try going back to an earlier version of Flash, and if all else fails, possibly even a revert to FF 2.

[PVnRT]

5. I can't tell how to access what add-ons I have

This is what the Tools -> Add-ons window looks like:



I keep trying to add Flash Block as a test - it downloads, says its installed...but it doesn't work and I can't figure out where it has been put.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Note the other tabs ...

Click on the "Extensions" button to see what extensions have been installed. Click on "Themes" for the themes, etc.

OnEdit: I've never used the internal "get add-ons" feature, so I went and tried it and had no problems. Click Add to Firefox, wait for the Install Now button to go active, click that, extension installs. I then restart Firefox to activate it, then go to Add-Ons > Extensions to set the preferences for it I want.

[PVnRT]

7. That's good to know, but they still don't show up

When I download/install, it says its done, I restart, and it's not there. Themes don't work either. Could it be sending stuff to a different folder somewhere? Not that that would make sense, it's just all I can think of at the moment.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Your profile may be borked ...

Did you do a fresh install of Firefox 3 after cleaning Firefox 2 or ... something else?

I've seen mention of some issues with profiles getting hosed when 3 is installed over 2. I'm not sure the reason for it is entirely known; it doesn't happen to everyone it seems. There are certain files that changed between the two versions, and the installer is supposed to deal with them, but occasionally it doesn't.

You might try creating a new, fresh profile and running with that to see if you can get things to install.

[PVnRT]

9. I just installed Firefox 3 over Firefox 2

In fact, I had no problems for a week or two...

Creating a new profile does not help - I still get the same problem.

[trotsky]

4. Get the Adobe Flash Uninstaller

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.htm

Down at the bottom - under "Uninstallers". Download the Windows one and nuke all the flash components. Reboot for the heck of it. Steer Firefox back to Adobe.com and reinstall Flash, see if that helps.

[PVnRT]

10. No luck

Except that, since nothing wants to install on Firefox, Flash will not work at all.

[PVnRT]

11. OK - so, I could uninstall Firefox

Apparently, since I installed it after the weirdness started, Windows was able to uninstall it. So I downloaded the file again...and when I try to run it, nothing. Task Manager shows it running under Processes, but nothing else is happening. I tried fixing up WIndows Installer, but that did not solve the problem, and I can find nothing on it in their knowledge base site.

It seems like somehow I managed to get a virus or something that zapped a bunch of install logs and the like, making it impossible to remove anything, then did something to Firefox (prior to me yanking it off) that prevented it from installing addons...I really can't think of anything I've done to this machine in the past month that would prompt this behavior; all I've put on it are music from CDs I've purchased.

[RoyGBiv]

12. I think you have registry issues ...

You mentioned in the other thread you use a program called RegCure. I'm not familiar with this particular package, but I've encountered a number of machines with borked registries that got that way by messing with the registry.

I'm not clear of the timing of when you installed this and when the more serious problems started arising, but it sounds suspicious. I googled RegCure and found a number of complaints about it with a variety of symptoms all over the place. If nothing else, it may have made the simpler problem of missing install.log files that much worse.

You didn't perhaps backup the registry before you used that program, did you?

[PVnRT]

13. No, I didn't, although I've sinced used a system restore

TO go back to an older point prior to installing that program.