liztull

Q: Firefox won't Force Quit?

I'm trying to update OS X, and haven't been able to Force Quit Firefox...It doesn't show up in the Force Quit dialog box, or in Activity Monitor. I've tried Killall in Terminal (killall -9 firefox-bin), and Terminal tells me there are no matching processes to be found. But when I try to restart my (mid-2015) Macbook to update, it tells me Firefox is preventing me from shutting down. I've tried to start Firefox from Finder and from the dock, and nothing happens, not even in Safe mode. Can someone please help?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 7:43 AM

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Q: Firefox won't Force Quit?

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  • by liztull,

    liztull liztull Oct 27, 2015 7:47 AM in response to liztull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 7:47 AM in response to liztull

    Also meant to add that on the dock, it doesn't show the application running...Note that when I first tried Force Quitting, Firefox did show up in the dialog box but wouldn't quit. Now it appears it isn't running (and yet still must be running somewhere...)

  • by TheWildRover,

    TheWildRover TheWildRover Nov 8, 2015 12:21 AM in response to liztull
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Nov 8, 2015 12:21 AM in response to liztull

    Sorry I can't help, but yes, I'm having the same problem. Seems to have appeared since Firefox 41 came out (I'm running on OS X 10.11). Like you, I find it's just freezing up, but unable to Force Quit it, and it doesn't show up in any process lists, and it can't be relaunched either.

     

    I managed to clear it from the Dock, by using 'sudo killall launchservicesd', and then 'sudo killall Dock' in Terminal, but that gives varying degrees of 'fix'. Sometimes it's OK, and I can continue as normal, but often it still leaves something active that even prevents a restart/shutdown, and I have to use a hard (power button) shutdown.

     

    For now I have deleted all Firefox Mozilla stuff from my system.

     

    Cheers

     

    Andy

  • by kyriakosz,

    kyriakosz kyriakosz Nov 22, 2015 5:00 AM in response to TheWildRover
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 22, 2015 5:00 AM in response to TheWildRover

    I don't think it is a Firefox specific problem.

    I had this problem with many applications.

     

    Thanks for the workaround, it worked for me!

    But Apple must fix this!

    I already made a link to here for other people also having this problem:

    After crash, apps still appear in dock but no active process and cannot force quit.

  • by TheWildRover,

    TheWildRover TheWildRover Jan 6, 2016 4:55 AM in response to kyriakosz
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jan 6, 2016 4:55 AM in response to kyriakosz

    Hmm, interesting. I hadn't had this with anything else yet. However, I have found another little anomaly which might be a little pointer.

     

    I have been a user of BookMacster for some time, but have recently found it not running. After a bit more testing, I found that it had trouble because of Firefox's inability to open and close cleanly in the Dock (It's not just BookMacster though, it does this if you restart Firefox after changing and extension or installing an update). I deleted Firefox and gave Chrome a try instead, now that isn't having the same trouble, in that it gets stuck in the Dock, but it won't allow BookMacster to open and close it cleanly to run its extensions, and gives pretty much the same end result as Firefox does.

     

    May be nothing in that, but you never know.

     

    The strange thing is that everything else is fine, it just seems to be these web browsers.

  • by kyriakosz,

    kyriakosz kyriakosz Jan 6, 2016 5:15 AM in response to TheWildRover
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 6, 2016 5:15 AM in response to TheWildRover

    Haven't deleted anything, and everything is still ok since I used your workaround:

    sudo killall launchservicesd

    and then

    sudo killall Dock

    in Terminal.

    I had this problem with Adobe Reader, Path Finder (not updated to the latest version for El Capitan) and Text Edit. But never with Firefox.

    I use Safari, Firefox and Chrome every day.

  • by NVHG,

    NVHG NVHG Feb 4, 2016 5:01 AM in response to liztull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 4, 2016 5:01 AM in response to liztull

    Hi,

    I've had this problem with Firefox hanging and refusal to force quit for a while. The solution that has worked for me is to untick the "use hardware acceleration when available" option. Go to Preferences>advanced and untick the box. Restart Firefox and hopefully this will solve the issue.

  • by TheWildRover,

    TheWildRover TheWildRover Feb 6, 2016 2:49 AM in response to NVHG
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Feb 6, 2016 2:49 AM in response to NVHG

    I've found my solution now too, all has been well since I removed the MacUpdate Desktop software.

  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot Feb 6, 2016 6:03 AM in response to TheWildRover
    Level 4 (1,387 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 6, 2016 6:03 AM in response to TheWildRover

    TheWildRover wrote:

     

    I've found my solution now too, all has been well since I removed the MacUpdate Desktop software.

    That was a good thing to do regardless of any other issue. They are bundling "stuff" with some of their installers now.

  • by seocam,

    seocam seocam Feb 9, 2016 3:29 AM in response to NVHG
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Feb 9, 2016 3:29 AM in response to NVHG

    By disabling hardware acceleration you might have performance issues. In my case it didn't fix it anyway...

     

    I also don't have MacUpdate installed in my machine.

  • by dennislogue,

    dennislogue dennislogue Mar 15, 2016 10:06 AM in response to liztull
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 15, 2016 10:06 AM in response to liztull

    I am having this problem too. I find it happens when Firefox does an update. Force quit doesn't work. Force quitting from Activity monitor doesn't work and the system won't shut down because it can't close Firefox. The only way to shut down is pressing the power switch for 20 seconds ... Sometimes even that doesn't work and I have to unplug the system. None of the suggestions in this post have solved the problem so far.

  • by Mikel085,

    Mikel085 Mikel085 Mar 15, 2016 10:28 AM in response to liztull
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Mar 15, 2016 10:28 AM in response to liztull

    Hey liztull,

    I would try restarting your computer in safe mode then try to update (hold shift on start up). This should disable any background processes for firefox. Or create a new user and then update from that user. It will update the rest of the users as well, then uninstall firefox then reinstall after the update. After the update if you have issues starting up, I would try safe mode again.

  • by dennislogue,

    dennislogue dennislogue Mar 15, 2016 8:15 PM in response to Mikel085
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 15, 2016 8:15 PM in response to Mikel085

    The Firefox update goes fine and in fact, Firefox works fine. It's only when I Try to close Firefox or shut down (I usually close all apps before shutting down) that I have the problem. I have had a similar problem with Adobe CC Desktop and that was due to 2 copies (Old and New) of the App being in the system.

     

    After the restart, the old Adobe app got cleaned up and everything worked fine. That is sort of like what is happening with Firefox. Once the system restarts clean with the updated Firefox, everything seems to work fine until the next update and then it has that hiccup on on the first program restart.

     

    Having said that, I am going to see if I can change the update setting from 'Automatic' to "Notify me of Updates" ... then I can shut down FF, install the downloaded update and I don't have to worry about residual / conflicting program data being resident in memory when FF restarts.

  • by gnomen,

    gnomen gnomen Apr 21, 2016 5:43 AM in response to dennislogue
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 21, 2016 5:43 AM in response to dennislogue

    I am having the problems with Firefox described here and, likewise, none of the proposed solutions has worked.  About ready to trash FF and switch to something else, except it is not even clear FF is the problem rather than the symptom.

     

    There have been no posts for a month on this thread.  Has everyone else found a solution or given up?

     

    Any further help or info greatly appreciated!

     

    Robert

  • by seocam,

    seocam seocam Apr 21, 2016 5:48 AM in response to gnomen
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 21, 2016 5:48 AM in response to gnomen

    gnomen did it start when you upgraded OS X to El Capitan? This issue is been discussed by Mozilla here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1258515

     

    Also I advise you to report your problem to Apple (like I did). They are going to ask you to provide some system reports to help understanding the problem. You can do that here: https://bugreport.apple.com/

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