Firefox Portable

Just a note that this happened to me, maybe this isn't the correct place to talk about it, but I found no other... I keep my browser (of course) and many other programs on my 4GB cruzer, I often times have family and friends who have issues with their own computers and I therefore carry many adware/spyware detection programs and whatever the best free antivirus program I can find on it. Well I recently wiped McAfee off my Mom's computer and installed AVG antivirus in it's place, and at some point in all that I was running and fixing, I ran my portable firefox.

Any body have any experience with that?

When I visit BBC's player here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/fivelive/

It tells me "To play BBC Radio 5 live please first install Windows Media Player for Firefox. "

And links to here:
http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-down...

In a clean fresh install of Firefox 3.0 (non portable) with no add-ons going to the following site works with no problem.

http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html

However, in a clean fresh install of Firefox 3.0 portable with no add-ons going to the same site returns the following error:

" The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
* Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. "

Today while testing some software I had to restart FFP. When I tried to start it again, it showed a splash screen, but then there was only silence. After some troubleshooting I started FF directly (not the launcher) and saw a message box saying that there's a dll missing (my launcher's %PATH% changed in between).
To summarize: When something goes wrong, FF informs users about it and lets them deal with the problem. The launcher somehow prevents it from doing this, which is definitely bad.

I use the portable on the computer, its quicker when reinstalling windows.

With FF2 i could call "FirefoxPortable.exe *somewebaddress*" and the page would load in an already running FF2 (I think i set AllowMultipleInstances=True in FirefoxPortable.ini)

However, this doesn't work with FF3 - instead I get presented with a dialog box saying "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the exsisting Firefox process, or restart your system."

Any idea on how to get rid of that?

I use Portable Apps from an 80GB USB drive that goes with me wherever I go.

On PCs that have Firefox installed that are under my control they have been upgraded by installing Firefox 3.0.

I have downloaded Firefox_Portable_3.0_en-us.paf.exe to my USB drive and installed it via the Options|Install a New App of the PortableApps menu system.

If I change systems and my USB key gets assigned a different drive letter, or if I move a Firefox portable install to a different location, some of my add-ons become disabled and show as being incompatible with Firefox 3.0. It is always the same few add-ons that do this, and I have verified that they are all updated versions for use with Firefox 3.0. Additionally, they work fine as long as the absolute path to Firefox does not change. Once the add-ons have been disabled, the only way to fix it is to manually uninstall and reinstall them each time the path changes.

I was once presented an update rom inside firefox portable which i acepted,and after it was completed i selected restart firefox.

It restated with a new non portable version with no addons and bookmarks and made it my deafult browser.

My portable editin along with my customizations still exists but i have to un it manually plus when i select to associate it as default i get "Firefox is already your default browser" but by that it refers to that standalone version that made its way to my computer.

I've used Portable Firefox here and there in the past but only started using it heavily recently. I'm running it from a portable 2.5" USB laptop drive on Windows XP.

Lately, Firefox has been crashing unexpectedly. Sometimes the crash reporter will appear (and sometimes will have issues sending the report). Others, FF just disappears. Sometimes I can reopen it, other times I get the following error:

NSIS Error

Installer integrity check has failed. Common causes include incomplete download and damaged media. Contact the installer's author to obtain a new copy.

I have noticed that sometimes, often when changing computers, that FFP3 does not restore my saved tabs. It also sometimes happens when restarting the same machine.

I always save all my tabs when shutting down my machine, but notice that, quite frequently, FFP3 seems to "forget" that I saved the tabs.

If I have more than one browser window open I always make sure that I close the one I don't want saved first.

Can anyone confirm this behavior?

(I use XP SP3 on all my machines.)

Thank you
Paul

Update: