Web Browsers

[madylarian]

This just started.  I am using FF 12.0, AdBlock Plus and NoScript.  For some strange reason FF has suddenly stopped remembering my home page, which has ALWAYS been set to about:blank.  It will get "stuck" on a page that was maybe open when I closed the browser and every time I open a new browser it goes to that page.  My default home in Tools is still about:blank and even if I set it again that doesn't seem to make a difference, nor does rebooting.  I have no idea what could be causing this.  It's not a hijack because it's been different pages.

Edit:  I was able to fix this by deleting the recent browsing history that included the site that was opening when I opened my browser but I still wonder why this is happening.

mady

[andyross]

Maybe a bug in FF? Try checking and/or posting on the Mozilla forums for Firefox.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new

[LoPhatPhuud]

Try this instead.

1. Open Options (Firefox -> Options -> Options)

2. Select the 'General' tab

3. In Startup - When Firefox Starts, use the pull down menu to select 'Show a Blank Page'

4. Press 'OK'

I doubt its a bug, but rather the way Firefox locates the stored 'about' pages when it is booting. The above should give you a blank page each time Firefox starts.

[madylarian]

LPP - I tried that but it didn't work.  If I close FF with a page open, it still goes to that page when I open it again, even after rebooting.  The only way, right now, to keep that from happening is to make sure to go to my blank home page before closing or delete recent history.

mady

[madylarian]

andy - I did see one person posting a similar problem but the solution didn't help.

HOWEVER..............for reasons known only to my computer the problem seems to have stopped for now, though I don't know why.  The only thing I did last night was to check my antivirus, Bitdefender, and found that it had found and quarantined some cookies and other items, which I deleted.  Perhaps one of them was causing this problem?  Who knows.  For now, at least, it seems to have abated.

mady

[LoPhatPhuud]

Mady,

In every version of Firefox I have used it always starts up at my selected home page. It sounds like you are getting the response seen for a crash recovery; using hte last opened pages. I checked the options and could not find one, so I suspect you may have an extension installed that is causing Firefox to start up using the most recent opened pages.

I'll do some more checking since that behavior rings a bell. Firefox does have a built in session recovery mechansim. That may be what you are encountering.

Do you have any extensions installed that effect tab behavior?

[LoPhatPhuud]

mady,

The info on this page may help you sort it out...

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session?s=session+recovery&r=1&e=es&as=s

[madylarian]

I've never installed any extensions and the only add-ons I have are the ones previously mentioned.  In addition, the page that automatically opened was not always the same!  After I fixed it the first time by deleting recent history it changed to a page I'd used more recently.  I didn't crash, I didn't try to recover anything and, most oddly, the problem seems to have fixed itself with no doing on my part other than deleting those items quarantined by Bitdefender.

It's a mistery!

mady

[madylarian]

Well, now I'm getting the warning about FF not being able to restore the previous session and showing a new window and the last page, asking me to choose to restore or start a new session.  I went to all of the suggested links and none of them really work.  The thing is, I didn't make any changes or additions to FF's configuration so I just don't know how this happened.  It just seems to happen if I close FF with a window open.  Now I wonder if maybe restoring to a point a few days before this started would make any difference.

mady

[andyross]

Check with the Firefox support forums from the link I posted earlier. They may have more ideas.

You may want to create a new Firefox profile. Information on how to do it can be found here:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocal...

You can create a backup of your bookmarks, then read that into the new profile.

[madylarian]

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andyross wrote:

Check with the Firefox support forums from the link I posted earlier. They may have more ideas.

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Well, it turns out that FF was trying to tell me it had closed in "crash" mode.  My hard drive crashed yesterday, dead as a doornail.  Fortunately I had Acronis doing weekly backups so I should be able to just restore everything on the new computer.

mady