Mozilla Firefox Browser Suddenly Disappeared

Question

Level 1

1 points

Mozilla Firefox Browser Suddenly Disappeared

I quit the application and the next time I went to open it, the Firefox icon was not in the dock. I could not find it in the applications folder either. There was still an icon on my desk top so I clicked on it, and a box with the firefox logo opened, then poof it vanished, the box and the desk top icon both gone. I have never had anything like this happen, my Mac has been performing well otherwise. Wondering if it is a flaw in the Mozilla software. Has anyone else had this happen? I think I will stick with Safari from now on. Anyone have an idea what happened?
Thanks
James

Flat screen imac, 17", PowerPC G4, 80 GB,, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 768 MB SDRAM

Posted on Dec 9, 2007 3:26 PM

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Answer 1

badness

Level 1

11 points

Dec 9, 2007 3:56 PM in response to james.j

I use Firefox and have never seen this type of odd behavior. Have you tried to redownload the Firefox application? How about Camino?

Over the summer, after I downloaded 10.4.10 my computer stopped running Quicken and Windows Media Player (Rosetta based programs, whatever that means). A lot of other people experienced this problem. Have you had any freakiness with other programs? How long ago did you upgrade to 10.4.11?

Adam

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Answer 2

james.j Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 9, 2007 4:15 PM in response to badness

Adam
I upgraded to Tiger about 3 months ago and everything seemed fine, I downloaded Mozilla Firefox several months prior to the upgrade, so it was working after I installed Tiger. I am not sure I want to download Firefox again if it is unstable. I have lost my recent Firefox Bookmarks, does anyone know if they would be stored in another folder on the hard drive?

Thanks
James

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Answer 3

james.j Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 20, 2007 10:55 AM in response to james.j

I downloaded the updated version of Firefox and all my bookmarks were there again. Don't know why it crashed in the first place.

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Answer 4

Strgzr

Level 2

307 points

Jan 21, 2008 8:12 AM in response to james.j

James: I see you got it to work by re-downloading the program, and since you say it wasn't in applications folder, I wonder if you put it there from the download originally or not? Did you drag the icon from the downloaded prog into your applications folder? Then after you opened and it appeard in the dock, did you control-click and choose to "keep in dock?"
Re where to find former bookmarks, if others, like you, update to new OS, like you did to Tiger, if you chose to "Archive and Install," this type of installation moves existing System files to a folder name "Previous System," then installs a new copy of Mac OS X.(You have to have enough space for both old system and new system.) See info here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301270
The bookmarks for Firefox are usually kept in this location(copy from "Previous System" to new system folder in same location as the following):
~your user home folder/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/"xxx" (copy the "xxx" folder in this location to new system folder in same location; this "xxx" real name of folder looks something like: "01v3xzx4.default"

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Answer 5

braisim

Level 1

8 points

Mar 18, 2008 1:31 PM in response to Strgzr

I have a similar problem. Periodically Firefox disappears from the Dock and the Applications folder. Not only that, but sometimes the icon appears greyed out and when I double-click, I get an error message saying something about "Firefox not being supported on this architecture" (and there was me thinking I'd left undecipherable error messages behind with Windows). When I drag the icon back into the Apps folder it works and bookmarks, etc., are restored. Version of Firefox is 2.0.0.12 and I'm running OS X 10.5.2

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

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