In today’s world, your computer is practically your best friend. It helps you with everything. With its help, you can find any information you need on the Internet, watch your favorite movies, play video games or even work.
Of course, to do all this you need the right software. You will need to install software for games, internet access, or streaming services on your computer.
Most of the time users have no problem with this. However, sometimes the most unpleasant bugs and problems can occur with your PC. For example, there is a rather common bug in the Mozilla browser, which reports “Firefox is already running but is not responding”.
What is the error “Firefox is already running but is not responding”
This error message is often seen when using the Mozilla browser. “Firefox is already running but is not responding” usually occurs due to changes in your Firefox profile which is created on your hard drive and contains all your bookmarks, personal settings, and other important information.
The main reason for this error is an emergency shutdown of Firefox. For example, this can happen if the computer was suddenly turned off, maybe because of a lack of power. After rebooting in such cases, Firefox will continue to run in the background and the profile is blocked.
Usually, this error isn’t too difficult and can be solved quite easily with a few simple steps.
How to fix “Firefox is already running but is not responding” error
There are a few simple methods that allow you to fix this error in your browser. It will literally take you a few minutes to execute them. To fix this error you need to:
Restart the program
The first thing you should do is simply close the app and try to restart it. In most cases, this solves the problem. You can also try restarting your computer after closing the program.
Try terminating the process via the task manager
If simply restarting didn’t give you the desired result, then you should go further and try shutting down the process completely using the task manager. To do this, you will need to:
- Right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager.
- In the Task Manager window, select the Processes tab.
- Here In the list you need to find Firefox.
- Click on it and then click on the End Task button at the bottom of the window.
- Find any additional Firefox processes that are running and close them as well.
Then just close Task Manager and restart Firefox.
Check access rights
For Firefox to work correctly, it creates temporary files in the Program Files directory on the C drive. Sometimes it happens that Firefox can’t create some files because it doesn’t have proper permissions. To check this you need to:
- Press the Windows key on your keyboard and the letter R at the same time to open the Run window.
- In this window, type this command: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox
- Next, locate the Profiles folder and right-click on it, then select Properties.
- Here you need to click on the General tab
- Make sure that the Read-Only attribute is empty
If this attribute is checked then Firefox cannot work properly and gives you the error “Firefox is already running but it is not responding”.
Unblock the Mozilla profile
Another reason for this error is that some unknown bugs may cause your Mozilla profile to be blocked. Unblocking it’s quite easy. All you need to do is:
- Press the Windows key on your keyboard and the letter R to open the Run window.
- In this window, type the following command: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
- A folder will open in front of you and there you should find another folder ending in .default.
- Open this folder and delete the file Parent.lock.
- Once you have done that, start Firefox as usual again.
If you can’t remove it then you need to reboot your computer and try again.
These simple steps can help you solve the problem with the “Firefox is already running but is not responding” error.
