The "My Ebay" page and the AT&T yahoo changed suddenly and some features are non operative. Also the Google instant search stopped working. All this is happening on Firefox. Everything displays and works correctly on IE. What could be wrong?

Question

Hi, On thursday evening I closed all open windows to do some virus scanning and window washer maintenance. After I was finished I opened up firefox and went back on Ebay and the "My Ebay" window has changed to a totally different appearance and I can't access messages, etc. My AT&T Yahoo email window has also changed its appearance and has selections on it which are new and non operative. They both are now presented as a vertical format and the "My Ebay" window is expanded off the monitor with a blue sliding bar on the bottom and large white areas in the viewing area. I can shrink it down, but I then need a magnifying glass to read it. The opening Ebay sign in window is normal. The opening AT&T sign in window is normal. Also the Google instant search results, which used to appear when I was typing in my search words, has also stopped working. Everything seems to work properly on Internet Explorer. When I double click on the Mozilla icon it takes me to the Mozilla start page and shows me the Google search bar. That is what I normally see. I'm baffled.

Answer 1

(1) Firefox's built-in post-crash page has not been a real HTML page for a long time (for example, from the time of Firefox 22, see: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/968212 Want to save LOTS of versions of "Restore Session.xht" from the "oops ..." page for later use]). If you had this working differently with Firefox 25, that might have been created by an extension.
You can check to see whether extensions are disabled or need an update on the Add-ons page. Either:
* Ctrl+Shift+a
* orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Extensions. The disabled extensions cluster toward the bottom of the list. To poll for updates, use the "gear" button above the list and choose Check for Updates.
If you used the Reset feature (or Firefox automatically did a reset due to some problem during upgrading), you will need to reinstall missing extensions. The reset feature creates a folder on the desktop named Old Firefox Data. Do you have that folder? There may be data you can recover from it.
(2) There are many ways for history to get cleared, both internal to Firefox and external. Could you double-check your Privacy settings?
orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Privacy
* The "Firefox will" drop-down says Remember History: Firefox shouldn't be clearing history, but an add-on or external software could do it
* The "Firefox will" drop-down says Use custom settings for history: inspect the "Clear history when Firefox closes" setting to make Firefox isn't set to clear history. Also check your add-ons and consider external software.
Firefox normally accumulates months of history. However, some of Firefox's database sizes are based on disk space available. If your hard drive is very full, Firefox might reduce the amount of history stored.