Firefox not responding, just error tone - Alt+F4 works

Greetings Forum!

I have a new problem on a Dell Laptop Inspiron 6400

Windows XP Pro SP3
w/1 gb ram & 1.6Ghz processor, Just in case it matters.

I started experiencing this problem this morning:
Firefox would not respond. The top bar that informs of the website you are currently on, was the faded blue/not highlighted. So, when I would go to try to click on anything within the website (in my case MSN is Home Page) all I would get is the error tone with any left click on anything on the page. Right click on the name of the webpage at bottom of screen to "Close" the page would not work either. Clicking on "X" in upper corner nor minimizing, would not work as well! I could click on anything on the taskbar e.g. quick launch (at the bottom) and it would work. Start button as well would work and I "Restarted" computer thinking that a reboot was needed. But upon startup & opening a browser - same thing.

IE did not have this problem!

I then thought: "why not uninstall & reinstall the new version - Firefox 4?" I did that & upon startup of newly revised Firefox - Same Thing! :confused

I then stumbled upon this after a few times...
I remembered that Alt+F4 would close the open/visible page. It took two (2) times (Alt + F4) to close Firefox (the only way I could get it to close). Then after a few times of doing this I noticed that after the 1st time pressing Alt+F4, the top title bar would then go from faded blue (unhighlighted) to normal bright blue (highlighted)!!! And... everything would now work. I thought I fixed it when the error message poped up about scripts being forbidden (a Firefox add-on), so when I saw that one of the requests was to "Allow Mozilla" I thought, A-Ha! here it is. But alas I was wrong. :cry

I don't know what happened. It worked last night.:confused

PS- I think I remember that either last night or this morning I may have upgraded (via a popup message) Java. So I thought maybe a conflict, so I removed/uninstalled the older version, via the Add/Remove tool of the Control Panel. Still the problem remained.

Thanks to all!

 

Greetings, damedic_mt.

Quick question: have you tried Firefox Safe Mode (Start > Programs > Mozilla Firefox > Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode))? I know you've upgraded to FF4, but if there's an add-on that's causing the problem, it may have been imported to the 4 upgrade.

 

Try this
At the top of the Firefox window on the menu bar, click the Help menu Firefox button, go over to the Help menu and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.... Firefox will start up with the Firefox Safe Mode dialog.
For Windows XP, click the Help menu and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled

See if your home page loads properly. If it does, one of your addons might be creating a problem.

 

Thanks guys-

For the temporary, that worked! Yay, no more having to hit Alt + F4 to get FF to work.

Sidenote, I also found out that another way (in addition to your previous ways to do so) to start Firefox in Safe Mode - you can press & hold down the SHIFT key when you click on your desktop icon or quick launch icon to start Firefox.

So, to move foreward, I just need to figure out what "Add-on" created this problem? How can I bring up a list of the add-ons that have been disabled. Is there a way to disable them one at a time vs. disable all add-ons?

Thanks.