Firefox Starting But Browser Not Displayed

Firefox starts as a service but the browser never opens

[piatkow]

I don't know what could have happened to cause this as my daughters had been using the PC and swear blind that they hadn't done anything unusual. The only thing different to my use of the PC was that they had two accounts open under XP.

Firefox 1.0.6 under XP Home Edition

When FF is started no browser appears. On using Task Manager I see FF in the list of processes but not in the list of applications. Some time on Google brought up suggestions that it could be to do with history files or lock files. I cleared all these out of the profiles (checked all profiles in all accounts) without success.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

[Receptional Andy]

Try running firefox in safe mode [kb.mozillazine.org] (e.g.
start >> run >> "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode
on a default windows install).

This will help to see if it's an add-on causing the problem. Make sure you 'end task' the current firefox.exe process first.

[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 12:33 pm (utc) on Dec. 21, 2006]

[piatkow]

Thanks Andy but no luck. The only difference now is that it sits there using a little bit more memory.

[skipfactor]

>>On using Task Manager I see FF in the list of processes but not in the list of applications.

Tried ending the process then restarting FF?

[piatkow]

Sorry, it was so obvious I missed it out of the original post. It was the first thing I tried.

[Receptional Andy]

if you haven't already, I would work through Mozilla's startup troubleshooter [kb.mozillazine.org] and standard diagnostic [kb.mozillazine.org]

[piatkow]

Thanks guys, in the end nothing worked except uninstalling and reinstalling.

Curiously XP did not automatically delete bookmarks or pre-filled content for forms when uninstalling Firefox. Convenient but a little worrying as that content can include passwords.