If the problem occurs only after restarting Firefox too soon, why not just give it longer to shutdown properly.

When you close Firefox you should try to always use the options from within Firefox menus such as the Firefox button, or the new button in Firefox 29.

Killing Firefox processes before it has finished properly could lead to a proliferation of sessionstore related files that could slow down the startup and closedown procedure and create a vicious circle of slow procedures. You could consider looking for and deleting duplicated files, but that would lose some restore information

• Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix_delete-duplicated-session-restore-files

Then don't re-open Firefox too soon !

Seriously, Firefox needs a little bit of time to close all the files that are opened while it was running. The amount of time to completely close down will vary from system to system and may vary from browsing session to browsing session on the same PC. The only way of "knowing" (that I know of) that Firefox has finished closing all its' files is to watch the Windows Task Manager > Processes tab to see when the firefox.exe process disappears.

There's a delicate balance between "launch" time and "close-down" time to open and close the various files that Firefox uses while it is running. Overall, I think that the Mozilla developers do a good job of keeping that in "balance" considering the number of "behind the scenes" processes that have been added over the last 2 years (or so).

@john99, I don't want to give it longer to shut down. On the occasions when I exit firefox and then suddenly remember I still wanted to go to some other website, I immediately launch firefox again.

Why wouldn't I?

The program should behave properly. The user shouldn't have to avoid clicking on the X button in the top right corner of the program because the program hasn't been programmed to behave properly when clicking on that X. The X is part of the user interface.

And if the program must fail, it should fail more gracefully than this (ie: not be stuck forever)

Thanks for the tip about sessionstore related files.

@the-edmeister, Sure, I could avoid a deficiency in the program by altering my behaviour. For example if a program crashed every time you clicked the mouse too much on a scroll bar, then you could simply not do that - Or, the program could be improved and remove the problem.

It's fine for firefox to take a few seconds to shutdown, I have no problem with that. Ideally it should be able to launch a 2nd process while the other one is shutting down - but I'm also fine with that not being the case.

I'm sure the devs are doing a great job but that's no reason for me not to want to fix this problem.

On windows XP, when I shut down firefox and then try to open it again 'too soon', I get the same pop up window coming up. But then, you click ok and wait a couple seconds and eventually you can start firefox again. Slightly annoying and undesirable behaviour, but understandable, and you can live with it.

But on Vista, the problem is that the previous firefox will *Never* end, so you can never start another one without killing it (and killing it is obviously bad). Surely not how anyone wants the program to act. I shouldn't have to baby firefox because it's too fragile.

Does anyone know a solution to this or should I go file a bug report?

Thanks :)

IMO, your expectations are too high. If anything is "too fragile" it's Vista, the 2nd worse version of Windows. Second only to WinME.

Now, if it never closes properly you have a problem and you need to do some troubleshooting.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

See also:

• "Hang at exit": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs
• "Firefox hangs when you quit it": https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+hangs

You should be using File->Exit or Firefox button->Exit to end Firefox and not the X on Firefox window (which only closes that one window).

Turns out I was wrong about the issue, it just seemed that way to me. It wasn't hanging *because* I tried to open it again too soon. I found out that plenty of the time I could open it again immediately and it would be fine. And that other times I would wait minutes before opening it again and it would have been hung from the previous session.

So, the real problem was "firefox.exe stays on sometimes after I close the program and won't go away unless I kill it.

Now, so far in FF29 this issue hasn't re-occurred. So it may be fixed now. If it doesn't happen again for a week then it must be fixed.

Glad it seems to be working ok for you.

Let's hope it stays that way, although as we did not figure out the reason I guess it could reoccur. Try to remember to closedown using the menus it may help

• Menu button → Quit

Having the same issue, if I close Firefox, Firefox.exe hangs around for random lengths of time, really annoying.

Hi frozenreads, Sorry you are having problems.

I assume that you have already scrolled and looked at this current thread and any help articles linked from it. Could I ask you to start a new thread by asking your own question and giving full details.

1. Please use /questions/new/desktop
2. Please try to follow the prompts and include troubleshooting info when you do that. (There is a green button to automate the process. Use that, or if you encounter problems doing so mention that in the new thread.)

Thanks