Why does Firefox frequently and randomly crash?

Question

Hi there, for the last couple months Firefox has gone from rock solid stability to frequently crashing randomly. The crashes occur when I'm actively browsing or not doing anything - I can't identify any particular action that is causing the crashes. The crash IDs are seemingly random and from a variety of sources.
Here are 5 recent crash ID's:
c97123e4-154d-40e9-b062-0adad2101025
70657a9e-5a9b-4f01-9eed-fe3162101025
959a25e7-75ee-4b2c-879b-bc5382101025
465eac9c-56f9-4d61-8b72-22d7d2101023
25590fa8-fdd7-48a8-8cb8-fa3052101022
Much thanks!

Answer 1

Does this occur when you click links in search engine results? There were some malware around that did this, which you can read about by searching for "Google Redirect Virus". Some are quite difficult to remove.
You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
* [http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/default.aspx Microsoft Safety Scanner]
* [http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/ MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware]
* [http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363 TDSSKiller - AntiRootkit Utility] - especially useful for tough cases
* [http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/ AdwCleaner] ''(ignore banner ads for other products)''
Further information can be found in the [[Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware]] article.