Some added toolbar and anti-virus add-ons are known to cause Firefox issues. Open the Add-ons Manager <Control><Shift> A and disable All of them.

OK, she had an add-on from avast! Online Security 9.0.2021.112, which is a different antivirus than I use. She also had Troubleshooter 1.1a, which she did not have at the time of the hang but I installed it when submitting the report that started this thread. I have disabled both.

She has Plugins for Shockwave Flash 14.0.0.179 which always activates and I think she needs it for Youtube; and for Acrobat, Java, Picasa, and Silverlight which ask to activate and I think she's never been asked.

I went to java.com to check if her version is current, was asked to activate Java, I activated it, and Firefox hanged. I had to kill her process. Restarted Firefox, the java.com window is still there, I activated Java again, it ran and says her version is current, Version 7 Update 67. The Add-ons Manager says that Java Deployment Toolkit 7.0.670.1 10.67.2.1 is known to be vulnerable. Is it true?

Please re-enable Troubleshooter. All it does is to tell this site the computers system details.No Personal Information Is Collected.

The Add-ons Manager says that Java Deployment Toolkit 7.0.670.1 10.67.2.1 is known to be vulnerable. Is it true?

That warning came out many, many versions ago. I don't know if the threat is real, or if no one bothered to update the warning.

Update your Shockwave Flash v15.0.0.152 http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/

Adobe Flash is 15.0.0.152 but Adobe Shockwave is 12.1.3.153. I installed both on my home PC, and will get to my wife's PC in a few minutes. Thank you for the warning.

... uh, wait, now Firefox says I have both Shockwave Flash 14.0.0.179 and 15.0.0.152 on my machine, but no Flash by itself, no Shockwave by itself, and no 12.1.3.153 of anything. Windows Control Panel says I have both Adobe Flash 14.0.0.145 and 15.0.0.152, and Adobe Shockwave 12.1.3.153, but no combination of Shockwave and Flash in a single product, and no 14.0.0.179 of anything.

I reenabled Troubleshooter on my wife's machine. I'm not the only pedant in this forum though. When installing Troubleshooter in the first place, Firefox warned that it was blocking an action (I forgot what kind of action) from mozilla.org unless I acknowledge that I want to risk allowing it ^_^

The Add-ons Manager says that Java Deployment Toolkit 7.0.670.1 10.67.2.1 is known to be vulnerable. Is it true?

The Java Deployment Toolkit plugin (also called Java DT) is a specialized plugin designed for web developers and network administrators and is not related to your general usage of Java (and is not required to be running to enable Java content in the browser.) Oracle likes to "bundle" this plugin with Java SE for unknown reasons. Mozilla still considers Java DT to be vulnerable, and has considered it to be vulnerable for a long time...that's why you see this message (and probably will continue seeing it, unless you delete the plugin.) You can delete this plugin from the list of firefox plugins, but it will probably come back when you update Java. If you're interested in talking more about it, we made a more thorough discussion on this specific plugin at the mozillazine support forum here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2877359

Hey hey-bud,

Thank you for answering that question. I will try to uninstall the DT plugin while leaving Java itself installed on my wife's machine.

Meanwhile the original question in this thread isn't answered, so I can't mark the original problem as solved. Thank you for your troubles though.

Yours sincerely, Norman Diamond

Do you have the Firefox icon on your quick launch? Right click on it, and select Open New Window. Sometimes this works. If it opens, close it by Menu > File > Exit.

That is an interesting suggestion. Next time I see this problem, I hope I remember to try it.

But there's still a better way, as suggested earlier: It is possible to code Firefox so that, when starting and detecting that another firefox.exe process is running and not responding, it can ask if the user wants to wait for the other process or terminate the other process. For ordinary users this would be more friendly than teaching them how to open Windows Task Manager, go to the Processes tab, and ignore a warning from Windows about the danger of exiting a non-responsive process. It would also be easier than remembering or teaching the trick that you suggest.

Meanwhile, back to the vulnerable Java DT, I couldn't find any way to uninstall an add-in from Firefox. The best I could do was change it from "Ask to Activate" to "Never Activate". The Windows Control Panel applet for Programs and Features doesn't show the Java DT so I couldn't uninstall it from there either.

Meanwhile, back to the vulnerable Java DT, I couldn't find any way to uninstall an add-in from Firefox.

I've since updated the mozillazine post to provide some (hopefully) clear instructions on how to delete the Java DT plugin. Have a look again at the first post and see what you think: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2877359

I would still recommend you start reading at "My recommendation:" in order to "permanently" remove the Java plugins -- assuming you don't need Java content running in the browser. Feel free to provide some feedback there.

The Windows Control Panel applet for Programs and Features doesn't show the Java DT so I couldn't uninstall it from there either.

Technically that's just the "control panel" and not an "applet" because an applet refers to "a Java application that runs in a browser." Due to the security hysteria in the past year or so, a lot of sites are beginning to move away from Java-based functionality like Pogo for example -- they're transitioning to flash-based gaming now. Anyway, only full Java installations are listed in control panel -> programs & features. I need Java for some of my (modern) applications and if you're the same way, I would say uninstall all versions before v8 and then go ahead and install v8 -- it's been out for months now and I'm finding better performance with it (even over v7.)

OK, I understand the instructions on finding which dll to delete. But that's because I'm a programmer ^_^ (not a Java programmer, but still...).

Next time I install Firefox for someone, I should refrain from installing Java. The habit of going to java.com and installing the latest version is so ingrained, I don't even remember if I did it on my wife's PC or if Firefox's installer already included Java.

It's fun to see occasional message boxes pop up saying the site's certificate revocation list isn't usable, with no indication of what program or what site is involved (when I'm not even using a browser, or worse if I happen to be using a browser but not on a related site). The process that pops up those message boxes is csrss.exe, which further provides a negative amount of help in trying to figure out what program is involved or what site is involved. Some Google searches eventually led to the conjecture that these come from a background task for Java scheduled updates.

I thought Windows Control Panel applets were called applets even before Microsoft decided that Internet Explorer was a core component of Windows 95. When I first installed Windows 95 from floppies, it didn't have Internet Explorer and didn't have any flavour of Java, but it had Control Panel.