Why does "It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while...." message appear?

Question

Have been trying to remove (for the second time) the "Antivirus Security Pro" virus from this laptop (which insidiously has invaded Firefox to the extent of display several pop-ups [incl. Recommended sites list; security rating of the active webpage tab displayed; video advertisements; scroll down and enlarge the screen shot in following post: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/959400]. As part of this process was instructed to shut down & power-up the laptop in Windows safe mode. Upon completing this step I opened Firefox and the following message appears at the bottom of the browser (no matter what tab is displayed): "It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while. Do you want to clean it up for a fresh, like-new experience? And by the way, welcome back!" There is also a button "Reset Firefox..." displayed to the right of this message and an "X" which is assumed to close out this message. Why does this message appear? Had been on Firefox (while in normal mode) just prior to encountering the re-emergence of the virus attack, so am questioning the reason for this message displaying and am suspicious of it being a part of the viral threat. Am hesitant to either reset and/or uninstall/reinstall Firefox prior to running another scan with Malwarebytes, Adaware and Spybot S&D . In fact Firefox was just upgraded to v.25 two days ago (when the laptop was believed to be free from this virus as well as from the ViewMgr.exe and the AVG/vprot.exe viruses. These initial virus removals were performed in the Windows normal mode, so while awaiting a response to this question, will do the scans and perform any additional manual file/registry search and destroy in the Windows safe mode. Will also try a test run of Firefox in it's own safe mode when the removal processes are completed. Would appreciate a rapid response on whether or not to do a Firefox reset and/or removal if this second attempt at removing this virus is unsuccessful.

Answer 1

The reset will not erase the virus but the reset can be done up to you.
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]
* [http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro/ Hitman Pro]
* [http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/ ESET Online Scanner]
[http://windows.microsoft.com/MSE Microsoft Security Essentials] is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.
Further information can be found in the [[Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware]] article.
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