Assistance please !!!?

Question

Opened pc tonight and when click firefox to
open mail message reads"Firefox already running but not responding. To open new window,close existing firefox process or re-start"I dont know how to do this , but tried re-start and got same message,

I am now using Internet Explorer just to get through to here, but wish to use Mozilla fire fox and dont understand whats happened as when i signed out earlier all was ok??

Answer 1

When Firefox, Thunderbird, or Mozilla Suite is in use, it prevents access to the active profile to keep other programs from altering the contents or causing conflicts. This "lock" is normally transparent to the user but it sometimes happens when it's not expected.

In Mozilla Suite and earlier Firefox and Thunderbird versions, you may launch the application, see the Profile Manager and receive a message that your profile is already "in use". In Firefox 1.5 or later, a "Close Firefox" dialog box may appear with the message, Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system. A similar "Close Thunderbird" dialog box and message may appear in Thunderbird 1.5 or later. These messages mean that the profile is locked.

How to unlock your profile
Your profile may become inaccessible or "locked" for a number of reasons. A locked profile most often occurs because the application failed to shut down completely the last time it was used and the task or process is still "running in the background", even though there are no open application windows. Ending the running process is normally sufficient to unlock the profile. If the profile remains locked, try these other solutions.

Close all open processes
Go through your task or process list to see if multiple instances of Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla Suite are still running or not responding. End each instance found, or restart the system.

Remove the profile lock file
The application may have shut down abnormally, leaving the lock in place. To fix this, open the profile folder and delete the file,
"parent.lock" (Windows),
"lock" and ".parentlock" (Linux), or
".parentlock" (Mac OS X)
In OS X you need to use a free utility like Onyx or Maintain to turn on visibility for invisible files to show ".parentlock". This file contains no information, and deleting it will unlock the profile. [edit]Check the profile folder name and location
If Firefox or Thunderbird cannot find the profile folder it will report that the profile is in use or, in Firefox 1.5 or Thunderbird 1.5 and later, that it is "already running, but is not responding". This may occur if you run the application from removable media, if the profile is stored on a network drive or if you manually deleted, renamed or moved the profile folder (bug 278860). The information stored inside the "profiles.ini" file (located up a few levels in the folder hierarchy from your profile folder) is used to find the profile folder. You can open the "profiles.ini" file in a text editor such as Notepad to see what information it contains. Note: IsRelative=0 refers to a custom profile location, for example, Path=D:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profil... IsRelative=1 refers to a relative path in the expected profile location, for example, Path=Profiles/default.xyz. Either edit the "profiles.ini" file to show the changed profile folder location or restore the profile folder to it's original name and location.
Note: If you deleted your only profile folder, have no backup to restore and are now seeing the "already running, but is not responding" error, delete or rename the "profiles.ini" file (or its parent Firefox or Thunderbird folder) in the profile folder path. A new profile will be created when Firefox or Thunderbird is restarted.

Check access rights
This problem can also occur if you don't have the rights to edit the files in the profile (or create the lock file in the first place). Please note that this can happen if you try to use a profile from a filesystem mounted with read-only (e.g. a remote Windows share which doesn't have "allow network users to change my files" checked). This can be pretty tricky to diagnose because there is no lock file in the profile, yet the same message appears (profile in use). Incidentally, Linux users may have ~/.thunderbird and/or ~/.mozilla-thunderbird in their home directories if they have had more than one version of Thunderbird installed.

Check for other applications using the profile
Netscape 7 or another Mozilla-based program may be using the profile. Try shutting down this program to unlock the profile. Additionally, you should create separate profiles for each different application. Especially if you use both Mozilla Suite and Netscape 7, corruption can result from sharing the same profile between two different programs. (This problem is unlikely with Firefox and Thunderbird, since they do not share profiles with other applications in the way that Mozilla Suite and Netscape 7 can share profiles.)

Answer 2

Press ctrl-alt-del
select "firefox" from the list, and click on "end-process".
Go through the entire list, and end every instance of "Firefox" that is listed. And close the window.

Then try to open the Firefox browser to surf the web.

I suggest you:
1) remove any extensions and add-ons for firefox
2) remove and then re-install "Firefox"
3) do a scan for viruses by using "Spybot" and "Ad-aware"

Theat should fix majority of problems associated with firefox.

Answer 3

press ctrl shift esc, then go to processes. click on the first thing and keep pressing F until firefox is highlighted. end the firefox process. then try to open it from your desktop. that happened to me a lot when i used firefox.

Answer 4

do what lesliepatrus says to do, that should fix it!

Answer 5

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