All of us have experienced it at least once. We’re happily browsing the internet or doing research or whatever, and suddenly your browser freezes up and stops your day dead in its tracks. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, here is how to troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox browser if it crashes, hangs, or stops functioning.

Browsers

Browsing the internet has become an integral part of our daily life, whether we are at home or at the office working or checking news and happenings on the go. We access the internet through browsers that lets us access, download and process information from the world wide web aka the internet. Some examples of browsers are Google Chrome, Opera, Opera mini, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

To Troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox

If you are using Mozilla Firefox and it crashes on you then here are some of the measures you can take to troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox to get up and running again:

• Activate Safe Mode
  • The safe mode loads this browser without the add-ons when you hold the shift key when starting Firefox. The other was is to click the browser menu, point to help, and choose restart Firefox with add-ons disabled. If you continue using the safe mode and the browser does not crash, this implies that there is an issue with one of your add-ons.
  • You may want to leave safe mode and restart the browser with the add-ons loaded. To troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox after it crashes again you can then disable add-ons one after the other to identify the problematic one.
• Reset Firefox
  • There can be issues with your profile folder that Firefox used to store your personal data. All bookmarks, browser history, cookie and auto-fill information and saved passwords will be transferred to a new profile folder. Remember that you will lose themes and extensions (causes of most browser crashes) and any other site-specific information after a reset on the browser.
  • Open the Firefox menu, point to Help and select troubleshooting information and then click the reset Firefox button. If Firefox crashes after you install your extensions, then most probably one of your extensions is causing the issue. You need to reinstall these one by one to identify the one that is causing the need to troubleshoot Mozilla Firefox crash.
• Disable Hardware Acceleration
  • Web pages run faster and web pages load faster with the hardware acceleration feature of Firefox. Sometimes this feature can cause issues with some graphic cards and drivers. To troubleshoot a Mozilla Firefox crash, check if this feature is an issue for your browser by selecting options after clicking the Firefox button and then click Advanced options, then untick ‘use hardware acceleration when available.’
• Check for Malware
  • Firefox can crash due to presence of malware on your system so you need to scan your system regularly with a good antivirus program. If you already use one and still have the issue, check with using an alternate antivirus program just to get a second opinion.
• Update the Software
  • Check for updates frequently for all the software you use on your personal computer so that you have the latest updates, such as virus definitions for example that are not up to date can cause the browser to crash.

Conclusion

We have briefly learned how to troubleshoot a Mozilla Firefox crash so that we can find out where the issue that caused it to crash originated. Checking the add-ons, extensions, hardware acceleration feature, malware and outdated software can help in the process to troubleshoot a Mozilla Firefox crash.