David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Q&A: Removing a Bad Add-On in Firefox
By J.D. BIERSDORFER, New York Times
April 19, 2010
Q: I recently added a bunch of extensions for Firefox, but now the browser is getting sluggish and crashing. How do I find the one thing that’s causing the problem?
A: To make sure the problem is a clashing add-on/extension, try restarting Firefox in the browser’s Safe Mode first.
Firefox now starts up without extensions. If the problems go away, than it is indeed likely one of those add-ons is raising a ruckus with something else in Firefox.
To figure out which extension is not playing nice, go to the Tools menu in Firefox and choose Add-ons. At the top of the Add-ons box, click on the Extensions button to see a list of everything installed. Since all the add-ons were disabled when you chose to turn them off for Safe Mode, you can now turn them back on one at a time to see which one behaves badly.
If you have a lot of add-ons, this could take a while because you have to restart Firefox each time after you re-enable an extension to see if the problem has returned. But after you start enabling and restarting, the bad add-on should become apparent and you can uninstall it from the same Extensions area of the Add-ons box.
Once you have found the problem, restart Firefox in its normal mode. The support area of Mozilla’s Web site has a document dedicated to troubleshooting Firefox extensions that has other helpful suggestions.
If the browser is still acting erratically, the culprit could be a third-party plug-in or another Firefox setting. In that case, you should concentrate on troubleshooting plug-ins or resetting Firefox’s preferences to get to the heart of the matter.
By J.D. BIERSDORFER, New York Times
April 19, 2010
Q: I recently added a bunch of extensions for Firefox, but now the browser is getting sluggish and crashing. How do I find the one thing that’s causing the problem?
A: To make sure the problem is a clashing add-on/extension, try restarting Firefox in the browser’s Safe Mode first.
- In Windows, close the program and go into the Start menu to Programs.
- Open the Mozilla Firefox folder.
- Select the program icon called Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode).
- In the Safe Mode box, select the option to disable all add-ons and restart Firefox.
Firefox now starts up without extensions. If the problems go away, than it is indeed likely one of those add-ons is raising a ruckus with something else in Firefox.
To figure out which extension is not playing nice, go to the Tools menu in Firefox and choose Add-ons. At the top of the Add-ons box, click on the Extensions button to see a list of everything installed. Since all the add-ons were disabled when you chose to turn them off for Safe Mode, you can now turn them back on one at a time to see which one behaves badly.
If you have a lot of add-ons, this could take a while because you have to restart Firefox each time after you re-enable an extension to see if the problem has returned. But after you start enabling and restarting, the bad add-on should become apparent and you can uninstall it from the same Extensions area of the Add-ons box.
Once you have found the problem, restart Firefox in its normal mode. The support area of Mozilla’s Web site has a document dedicated to troubleshooting Firefox extensions that has other helpful suggestions.
If the browser is still acting erratically, the culprit could be a third-party plug-in or another Firefox setting. In that case, you should concentrate on troubleshooting plug-ins or resetting Firefox’s preferences to get to the heart of the matter.
