What setting do you have here:

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Options > Advanced > Update

By the way, there usually is a pause a day or two after a new release to monitor for major problems before notifying all browsers that an update is available.

I have the orange Firefox button.

Yeah, although I like to get the latest version, I've noticed a delay on my other computers. I gave my Windows 8 computer a solid week or two with 18.0.2 and it still said I needed to update manually from the website.

Also, I check update status by: orange firefox button > help > about firefox

I just read that due to a high number of crashes in the past 24 hours, Firefox 19 is not recommended for Windows 8 users at this time. It's good to hear that not everyone is affected by whatever the problem is.

It is a problem with some AMD Radeon graphic display cards.
If you have such a card and use Windows 8 then it is best not to update.

• bug 830531 - [Win8] crash in XPC_WN_Helper_NewResolve mainly with AMD Radeon HD 6290/6310/6320/7290/7310/7340

(please do not comment in bug reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

On my both computers (Windows 7, Window 8), the automatic update does not work at all, although it is activated. All I get in the Firefox info box is that an update is available, with a link that I have to follow to download the installation file and install it manually. No difference even if I wait for weeks. The problem persists since version 3.6.16 (the last update in the chronicle). Note that the automatic update performs well in the Windows XP mode of my Windows 7 system !

Hello Dubas, any luck if you reset the Software Update feature by closing your Mozilla application and deleting the "updates" folder and the two files "active-update.xml" and "updates.xml" ?

see for more info : Software Update not working properly

see also, Show hidden files and folders - Windows

thank you

I think it has to do with administrator permissions. I opened Firefox as an administrator, entered my credentials, and it updated as expected.

Instead of having to close/reopen as an administrator, is there a way to configure Firefox to request elevation (like other programs do when updating)?

Full disclosure, I did not try the other solutions, but opening as administrator seems to do trick.

Thanks for the feedback.

Do you have the Mozilla maintenance service installed?

That program should ask for elevated permission one and download and install updates in the background.

• Tools > Options > Advanced > Update: "Use a background service to install updates"
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/what-mozilla-maintenance-service

• maintenanceservice.exe
• maintenanceservice_installer.exe

Meanwhile I updated Firefox manually to 23. But I have the same update problem with Thunderbird and deleting all Firefox and Thunderbird updates folders, active-update.xml and updates.xml (from all users' profiles) unfortunately did not help.

The Mozilla maintenance service is installed and enabled in the update options. There is also a Mozillamaintenance service listed as "closed", which cannot be started manually. Running "maintenanceservice.exe" manually requires administrative rights, but even with these it does not run as a process.

Yes, updating Thunderbird (and likely Firefox, too) works when I start this program as an administrator (from my normal user account) ! This looks to be a serious bug, as normally I never start any internet-software with administrative rights. When activated, the maintenance program should look for updates and download them from any standard user account, then if necessary automatically ask for an administrative password for getting installed (just as, for example, Opera).

As updating works now, probably most users just rely on having activated the automatical update option and will never realize that they use old [even very old] versions of Firefox or Thunderbird.

Update: I just received an automatic update to 23.0.1. So this issue may have been resolved in FF 23. :)

Unfortunately it did not work on my PCs (both Windows 7 pro ×64 and Windows 8 pro ×64). As a standard user I still reproducibly got only the message THAT an update is available. Only after Firefox was started again as an administrator, the automatic update worked well. But the problem obviously still subsists in Firefox 23.