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Undoubtedly someone out there are having similar issue. Google search for “Firefox is already running“ return more than 49,000,000 page results! (49 millions) and most of the pages happen to be published after Firefox 3 release (June 2008). So you can make some clever assumptions that this particular issue might related to Mozilla Firefox 3.
Google search results page
The below image is the said error message that sums up the 49 millions search results.
Firefox not respondingFirefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system. How to terminate firefox.exe?
Its no so trivial If you are running Firefox on Windows XP. Open the Run task window WIN+R and type in the below code to force kill firefox.exe and its running child process.
taskkill /F /IM firefox.exe /T
I also made a batch script for the above, the download link can be found below ↓. You’ll need to save the batch file (kill-firefox.bat) inside your system directory (windows/system32/) and execute it via run window; Win+R then type kill-firefox. Download
For windows Vista, you’ll need to open the Task Manager (press Ctrl+Alt+Esc) then in the Task Manager list of running processes, find firefox.exe and right click select terminate.
While for those on linux, unix or mac platform shuting down lock process might be a bit hard. Check out this external page for mac and linux.
What could be wrong
Mozillazine KB articles (Profile in use) describe this issue to be related to Firefox delay shutdown but it doesn’t elaborate much about the process. There is also few tickets laying around in bugzilla that related to this issue:
- #399108 - Firefox takes a while to close.
- #379736 - Delayed shutdown makes it impossible to start Firefox immediately.
- View all tickets related to Firefox not responding.
There is numerous factor that can cause Firefox to hangs and most commonly are linked to problematic extension and conflict with third party programs (securities software). To make this matter worse on may last year there is a report regarding a trojan that target firefox.exe (poison ivy) and causing it to always running in the background transparently.
There is no one way solution to solve this issue as there is many way to reproduces it. Check out this article from Mozilla official knowledge base on how to troubleshoot Firefox not responding issue.
Might be interest
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Kaizeku Ban
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Firefox is already running, but not responding annoyances
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4 Responsesto “Firefox is already running, but not responding annoyances”
I had this same error pop up on both my work and home computers and none of the fixes I found on the web were relevant (or so I thought). Most pointed to corrupt or locked profiles but my profiles folder was empty. I finally decided just to uninstall/reinstall but upon successful install of FF 3.0.11 I got the same error when FF tried to launch itself. Finally I took a look into the profiles.ini file located in the same folder that contained my empty Profiles folder and there was an entry on line 7 defining a profile path to a profile that did not exist (Path=Profiles/4j6qdc9k.default). Knowing that there wasn’t anything in the Profiles directory, I simply deleted that line from the profiles.ini file, saved it and FF launched perfectly after that. So, it was a profile issue after all - just that it did not exist anymore and FF needed to let it go.
[Reply]thank you sandy that a really good advice.
[Reply]Oh good. It’s not just me. I may try the profile trick above, but if that is the real issue, Firefox updates should just remove that inactive profile and be done with the issue. I recommend Firefox to all my site visitors, but I’m getting frustrated because of the high memory usage, lockups and now this. So now feel I frustrated all my visitors that listened to me and made the switch.
[Reply]I only have this problem when I close ff and try to restart it right away. I just wait a few seconds or end task ff :)
Avice, why don’t you post much anymore? I’ve been following for a while, first time posting :) Btw, this template looks awesome!
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