FireFox Not Closing As it Should

[hlewton]

The last 2 days FireFox has not been closing as it should when I exit a site. As I try to open a new site I get a message saying FireFox is still running and needs to be closed. As soon as I click to close it, the new site opens. I have not found anything helpful in searching the NET. I thought of uninstalling and then reinstalling FireFox to see if that helps but I don't want to lose any of the exceptions I have put in place over the months to remember cookies from certain sites like this one. Any idea what's happening and how I can fix it? Thanks.

[HansV]

Try this:
In Firefox, select Help > More Troubleshooting Information.
Click 'Open Folder' next to 'Profile Folder'.

S2624.png

Close Firefox.
In File Explorer, delete the file named parent.lock

S2625.png

Start Firefox again to see if the problem has been solved.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans, so far that seems to have fixed the problem.

[hlewton]

In trying to read comics, I get this presented to me.

Untitled1.jpg

The date it shows is outdated, so I click on the link that is inside the red box to read the latest strip. When I do, I see this error, which happens every time I click it:

Untitled.jpg

If I type the name of the strip in the search box, it does then find the strip but that seems like an unnecessary step if I could avoid the error message. Does anyone know what the error means and is there anything I can do to avoid it?

[HansV]

Is this consistent? I could not reproduce the problem.

[hlewton]

Try this:
In Firefox, select Help > More Troubleshooting Information.
Click 'Open Folder' next to 'Profile Folder'.


S2624.png


Close Firefox.
In File Explorer, delete the file named parent.lock


S2625.png


Start Firefox again to see if the problem has been solved.

FireFox started not closing again. So I followed the steps above and had to delete parent.lock again. Is it supposed to recreate itself like that? Never had this problem until recently so why is it happening now with FireFox?

[HansV]

I'm really sorry, but I don't know why that happens.

[stuck]

As best as I can make out, parent.lock should be deleted when FF is closed. That implies if FF doesn't shutdown correctly the presence of parent.lock will prevent you from opening FF.

So how about trying this sequence:
1. Close FF as you normally do
2. Once it seems to be closed, open Task Manager
3. Check there are no FF processes lurking in the background
4. If there are, right click on them and 'end process'
5. Once you can see FF really is closed, restart NOT shutdown your machine

Another idea, ensure Fast Start is turned off:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software ... windows-11

Ken

[BobH]

Sounds like a question for the Mozilla Firefox forum.

You will need to register. I've found this set of forums to be very useful.

[hlewton]

Sounds like a question for the Mozilla Firefox forum.

You will need to register. I've found this set of forums to be very useful.

Thank you. I may have to do that but I think I need to understand what's happening now more than I do. I am going to try to reply to Stuck first with what I did. Maybe he knows what is going on.

[hlewton]

As best as I can make out, parent.lock should be deleted when FF is closed. That implies if FF doesn't shutdown correctly the presence of parent.lock will prevent you from opening FF.

So how about trying this sequence:
1. Close FF as you normally do
2. Once it seems to be closed, open Task Manager
3. Check there are no FF processes lurking in the background
4. If there are, right click on them and 'end process'
5. Once you can see FF really is closed, restart NOT shutdown your machine

Another idea, ensure Fast Start is turned off:
https://www.windowscentral.com/software ... windows-11

Ken

Thank you for this reply. Please let me tell you what I have done to see if you know what's happening.
1. I turned off Fast Start.
2. Restarted.
3. I opened FF.
4. I closed FF and saw (3) or (4) beside FF in The Task Manager. They slowly closed before I could highlight them.
5. I tried opening FF again while watching the Task Manager.
6. I was able to quickly highlight FF and End Task after I had closed it
7. I restarted the computer once more.
8. Opened FF again and watched the Task Manager as I opened FF. It showed multiple instances of FF opening. Then as FF was still open, it no longer showed up as a process in Task Manager.
9. I closed FF while watching The Task Manager and it reappeared in the Processes with multiple sessions showing up as it closed each instance over a time span of around 10 seconds. NOTE: Multiple times during these experiments I deleted parent.lock only to have it immediately return on opening FF.
10. I opened Eileen's Lounge using a desktop shortcut while watching The Task Manager and it showed FF opening 9 instances of FF.
11. When I closed FF this time it took a little longer than 10 seconds to close all the instances BUT, while FF was still open at Eileen's, The Task Manager did not list FF in its processes.

I have no idea why all this is happening and not sure how to explain it if I joined that Mozilla FireFox forum.

[hlewton]

I did a search asking about the parent.lock i FireFox and found this.

People also ask
How do I turn off parental controls in Firefox?
Parental controls and web filtering software

This feature can be turned off only through your password-protected parental settings on your operating system, so your child will not be able to deactivate this feature through the browser.

I am not sure how to turn it off as suggested above. I don't use passwords for my OS so where can I disable that "parent.lock" in Windows 11 Pro.

[stuck]

I did a search asking about the parent.lock i FireFox and found this...

Ignore that find, it won't help you. The parent.lock file that's causing your problem has got nothing to do with parental controls.

Ken

[stuck]

... NOTE: Multiple times during these experiments I deleted parent.lock only to have it immediately return on opening FF....

That's how it is supposed to behave, parent.lock is a file that indicates that the the Firefox profile associated with it is in use. When you close Firefox, parent.lock is supposed to be deleted. Your problem is that for some reason parent.lock is not always being removed when you close FF. Thus when you come to restart FF you can't, because the left over parent.lock file says the FF profile you are trying to use is already in use.

Ken

[hlewton]

... NOTE: Multiple times during these experiments I deleted parent.lock only to have it immediately return on opening FF....

That's how it is supposed to behave, parent.lock is a file that indicates that the the Firefox profile associated with it is in use. When you close Firefox, parent.lock is supposed to be deleted. Your problem is that for some reason parent.lock is not always being removed when you close FF. Thus when you come to restart FF you can't, because the left over parent.lock file says the FF profile you are trying to use is already in use.

Ken

OK, thank you. I think I can explain it that way in the forum Bob suggested.

You know the strange thing is, FF was working fine until it updated yesterday. Then it went back to acting up again.

[hlewton]

... NOTE: Multiple times during these experiments I deleted parent.lock only to have it immediately return on opening FF....

That's how it is supposed to behave, parent.lock is a file that indicates that the the Firefox profile associated with it is in use. When you close Firefox, parent.lock is supposed to be deleted. Your problem is that for some reason parent.lock is not always being removed when you close FF. Thus when you come to restart FF you can't, because the left over parent.lock file says the FF profile you are trying to use is already in use.

Ken

OK, thank you. I think I can explain it that way in the forum Bob suggested. But I have to ask, I believe that parent.lock is the culprit but I have no way of proving it is not being deleted unless it would be still visible if the folder it's in if I kept it open after closing FF. I'm going to try that right now. I hope that is a valid experiment.

You know the strange thing is, FF was working fine until it updated yesterday. Then it went back to acting up again.

[hlewton]

OK the attachment shows parent.lock was not deleted when I closed FF. But I had that folder open when I closed FF so is it true to say parent.lock was not deleted when FF was closed?

Parent.jpg

[stuck]

It looks that way.

Ken

[hlewton]

It looks that way.

Ken

Thanks. I'll sign up for that forum and see if they have any answers.

[hlewton]

Well I got an answer from that Mozilla forum. Not sure I like the answer. here it is:

That is normal and expected behavior. The parent.lock (Windows) or .parentlock (Linux, Mac) file is no longer removed in order to detect startup failures (crashes) and offer to start in Safe mode.

There was a link to more discussion about it but I took away nothing useful from it. I never saw anything that offered to start in Safe Mode and glad about that. I am hoping Mozilla does something to fix this problem but not sure they even consider it a problem at all. I found 2 work arounds. The first and most obvious is to use a different browser. The second is to only close FF's tabs and not exit FF until I am finished using it.