Firefox crashed, crashed on restart, rebooted, FF crashes on startup, reinstalled, asked me to reboot to finish, keeps asking me to reboot to finish even when trying to uninstall now, completely hosed... help

Question

Firefox crashed this morning on startup. retried, but keeps crashing. Sent multiple submits using the FF crash tool. Tried rebooting, but same result. Tried reinstalling FF7, but when asked to reboot to finish installation, the installation never finishes. Now even when I try to uninstall FF, I get a message stating that I need to reboot to finish the installation. I am completely hosed with FF right now... cannot run app, cannot reinstall, cannot uninstall.

Answer 1

Hello zalloy, try to delete the [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file profiles.ini] file in [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder Profile folder], to see if the problem is there, restart firefox and check if working.
otherwise go for a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before reinstalling the new copy of Firefox, see: certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a ''Clean reinstall''. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:
'''Note:''' You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.
#Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
#After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
#Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
#*'''Windows:'''
#**C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
#**C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
#*'''Mac:''' Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
#*'''Linux:''' If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see [[Installing Firefox on Linux]]. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the [http://www.mozilla.org/firefox#desktop Firefox download page], simply remove the folder ''firefox'' in your home directory.
#Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
##Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
##Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.
Please report back to see if this helped you!
if you can not delete the Mozilla Firefox program folder, try to boot Windows in Safe mode (press F8 on the boot screen) to see if that allows to delete that folder.
thank you