Firefox will not load any sites

Firefox is my default browser.

Recently, when I opened it all the tabs had the wheel showing that it was trying to load the page. However, it NEVER loaded the page.

I opened Chrome and it immediately went to the home page with minimal delay. I could surf without problem.

I opened IE and was able to surf as well.

I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it and it worked. Thought the issue was resolved, until I tried to surf a few hours later. Same issue came back. I googled the issue and followed the instructions that Firefox suggested (ie: Checked proxy settings, and DNS Prefetching). Which didn't resolve the issue.

I also went into the AppData file and deleted the information that was retained so that I could try a fresh install of Firefox. Same thing would happen, Firefox would stop working after a few hours.

I ran scans using: Avast Antivirus, Malwarebytes Anti-malware, and few other programs and nothing has turned up.

I know that I could scrap Firefox entirely and just use Chrome, and I might switch. However, I would rather find out why Firefox is not working before I make the switch.

 

Hi TJGarner, Have you been through the FF HELP and selected the problem area? Neil.

 

I mentioned this in the OP: "I googled the issue and followed the instructions that Firefox suggested (ie: Checked proxy settings, and DNS Prefetching). "

If that is what you are talking about... yes. I have. It didn't help.

 

I didn't mean a Google search for Help. On the FF Menu Bar - Help > go direct to Mozilla site and there are quite a number of selections to choose from.
The Menu Bar is obtained by Right click on the FF orange circle (upper Left) when the browser opens. Neil.

 

One thing I've learned when trying to toubleshoot any FF problem, is to restart with addons disabled. You can easily (if your problem occurs all the time) see if an addon is causing it or not. From that, you can then restart with addons enabled. Go to the hamburger menu, and select the Question Mark icon; then choose that option. This is assuming that you have addons installed.

If you are on beta, FDE or Nightly, I'd suspect e10s....

 

The google search took me to FF Help. When I went through FF Menu Bar - Help it took me to the exact same place that google took me (however, since FF doesn't load any sites at all, I copied the url and pasted it into Chrome). So, yes, I got to the same destination as you suggested, just took a different route.



psaulm119: I disabled all add-ons and extensions. I closed FF and opened it back up and no improvement. I am not on beta, FDE or Nightly... not sure what those are actually. I've been running FF for years - just the standard FF browser, nothing fancy. Just stopped working the other day and I haven't been able to figure out the variable that changed to cause it to happen.

 

Have you tried using ADWCleaner to see if that can clear the system? Neil.

 

Sorry for abandoning this thread. I just deleted FF and went with Chrome... however, all that did was prolong the Trojan from exploding. It would appear that I was infected with something that caused FF to stop working correctly.

When the Trojan exploded everything was a mess and I actually posted in the malware forum and got it all cleaned up. I am actually back to using FF as I post this... with a completely clean computer.

Thanks for the thoughts and ideas, and you can mark this resolved.

 

As the Thread Starter, you need to got to Thread Tools and check as instructed. Thanks. Neil.