Pop-up saying "something is preventing Firefox from updating securely. Please make sure that you have the latest version of Firefox from: http://www.firefox.com". I have 4.0 installed. What is happening?
This pop-up occurs very sporadically - maybe once/week. I don't see any problems, but wonder what is missing, what canpt be updated, what the security issue is. Thanks for any reply.
All Replies (6)
It's not from Firefox. The official name of Firefox is: www.mozilla.com. You might want to run some anti-virus/spyware scans to see if your PC is infected:
1. http://www.avg.com/us-en/homepage 2. http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php 3. http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
You should use all these three as each one might catch different viruses/spywares. Once you finish your scanning, you can delete them from your PC or keep whichever you like.
I suspected not, but it only comes up regarding Firefox. I do not do a lot of browsing and do religiously use Ad-Aware, Norton, SpyBot and several other scanners (not AVG nor malware.
I will try and determine where the pop-up is originating - probably Windows Update or some such.
Thanks for your reply.
I googled "www.firefox.com" and it came out a result. I clicked on the link and it did bring me to Firefox official website. So I guess it's a legitimate website address. So I did learn something today. But the pop-up still looks very suspicious. It seems someone is trying to install something into your PC. May be you can check if any of your extensions and/or add-ons cause that problem or not:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20extensions%20and%20themes
This is what Mine looks like: It doesn't say to go to firefox.com. It happens probably 3-4 times a week.
This issue can be caused by the presence of leftover files in the Firefox program folder (defaults\pref) like a file firefox.js that overrides the update URL with a wrong link.
See my post here and do a clean reinstall and be sure to remove the Firefox program folder.
Download a fresh Firefox copy and save the file to the desktop.
- Firefox 4.0.x: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html
- Firefox 3.6.x: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html
- Uninstall your current Firefox version.
- Do not remove personal data when you uninstall the current version.
Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.
- It is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure that there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling.
Your bookmarks and other profile data are stored elsewhere in the Firefox Profile Folder and won't be affected by a reinstall, but make sure that you do not select to remove personal data if you uninstall Firefox.