I have been using FireFox Portable for quite some time now on my old HP XZ133 WinXP Home notebook and my Gateway tablet PC at work. Suddenly on Friday when I tried to open Firefox Portable from my portable HDD, it acted like it was working normally, but Firefox never came up. I tried restarting the computer and performing a Windows System Restore back to last Thursday when I know it was working perfectly and still had no luck. When I plug the HDD into my Tablet at the office, everything works perfectly with no problems whatsoever. I tried running Firefox Portable in safe mode, but still the same result. I even removed and re-installed Firefox portable onto my HDD but it still won't open. I took another flash drive I had and installed Firefox Portable 3b2 and it worked just fine. Took a U3 flash drive with Firefox Portable 2.0.0.12 and the same extension set and it worked just fine, but for some reason my HP computer at home just won't open Firefox anymore. Looking at the task manager when I try to open it, I see the FirefoxPortable.exe appear in the process list for a few seconds, then the firefox.exe appears and the firefoxportable.exe disappears and just a few seconds later the firefox.exe disappeared. I have checked the error logs on my PC and can't find any entries in the Windows Event Logs that would give me an idea as to what the problem might be. Has anyone else experienced this and could maybe assist me? Thanks.
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It doesn't work from the HDD at all, or only when the HDD is plugged into your HP? If it doesnt work at all from the HDD, its probably a hardware issue. If it's just on that HDD while plugged into the HP, depending on the age of the PC it could be a compatability issue with detecting the proper size of large drives.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
I have the external HDD attached to my tablet right now and Firefox Portable works Great here. I even copied the files from my portable HDD to the desktop of my HP laptop and it won't even run from there, but it ran fine last week and I have not installed or modified any new extensions in the last couple of weeks. Is there a debug mode to Firefox where it can write a log of all actions taken during the loading process somewhere so I can see what it causing it not to finish loading on my hp pc? It works fine on every other PC I try it on, but for some reason the HP at home won't run it suddenly. I am starting to wonder if Avast antivirus is blocking it, but I would think if that was the case that Firefox.exe would never even begin to show up in the processes list.
Just to be sure you've eliminated the usual suspects:
You've run chkdsk /f
on the removable drive, substituting the correct drive letter for x:? (The command prompt version sometimes works better.)
You've rebooted the HP at home?
Would you mention the technique you used to get into safe-mode? The geeky method would be to launch a command prompt, cd to the FirefoxPortable path, and type
FirefoxPortable.exe -safe-mode
but there are other ways to do it as well.
Have you tried removing all of the extensions, to see if that makes a difference?
Task manager shows that you have enough resources, and there's not another ff running?
If you copy the complete install ( .\FirefoxPortable and all the folders below it) to another USB drive, or your hard drive, or to another place on the removable drive, do any of them work? If you delete the FFP on your removable drive and copy the working install of FFP from that U3 drive, does it not work on the removable drive where you want it to work?
The answer is probably yes to all, but I thought I'd ask...
MC
Chkdsk was the first thing I tried, rebooted normally and into Safe Mode with Network Support, still no go. Tried the geeky method of launching safe mode, still won't start. Have removed all extensions and attempted, still no start. I have copied the complete installation to a folder on the desktop of the HP and it won't work. Once I got to the office this morning and tried it with my tablet and it worked, I copied the entire installation to my U3 drive and at lunch I copied it over the copy I put on the desktop of my HP (thinking it may have been corrupted since chkdsk did find and correct some errors this morning, but still no FFP on that computer. It is really weird because I can launch FFP from the same location on the portable HDD at work, but just not at home and it worked fine last week, which is why I even tried a Windows System Restore to a point in the middle of last week when I know it worked just fine.
It sounds like it would be an issue with the HP machine then, if it doesnt boot from the HDD or on the HP when u copied it to the desktop.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
That is the strange thing. Nothing has changed on that PC and I also did a Windows System Restore to a point where I know that FFP worked perfectly and it still didn't work. I have even disabled my AV program and tried it and it still won't start and just last week it worked wonderfully on that same system with the same version of FFP on the same external hdd.
I know this is an old thread, but I had the same problem, and this might sound crazy but the problem had to do with my docking station. I was loading FF from a thumbdrive via portapps menu, and I would see the task in task manager, but it would never load. For some reason FF gives odd problems with my docking station.
I finally undocked it, and it works fine every time.
I have had the same problem for the last few months and not been able to resolve it. Once I start Firefox Portable the splash screen shows and then nothing. Task Manager shows Firefox and Firefox portable both running with Firefox using around 16mb of memory and FFPortable using around 5mb. Any idea on resolution would be welcome.
martinr
Did you try right clicking on the program in Task Manager and choosing "Bring to front"? Sometimes that works.
I assume it doesn't show up on the task bar; if it does have a button there, you can right click and choose maximize.
MC
Has anyone resolved this? I am getting the same error on my new images but not on the old ones. The major difference between the previous image (June, 2008) and this one is Service Pack 3 and all updated hotfixes. Everything else is the same, including the anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software.
I'm using Windows Vista Ultimate SP1,Avast Pro 4.8, PC Tools Firewall Plus. I first disabled Avast still no luck then I disabled PC Tools Firewall Plus but still no luck. I even try to use it at uni which runs xp pro sp2 and dont work on that either. With so many people having the same problem I think it got to do with the maker of this.