Firefox thunderbird not responding

[abtygwyn]

I am getting an increasing number of instances where I go to open a browser (firefox) and I'm told there is another instance open which is not responding and the error message tells me I can either wait or restart to solve the problem. In practice I've found that restarting is the only solution. The same situation occurs with thunderbird, although less frequently.

All I need to know is:- is this a common problem or does it indicate that somewhere in my setup I've got a wrong or bad setting. (I'm running lmde 2)

Thanks

[Cosmo.]

It might be a problem with the profile. As investigating such thing with Thunderbird is a little bit more complex I recommend to start at first with FF.
To find out, if this is a profile problem do the following:
Close FF.
Open your file-manager and make hidden files visible (press ctrl-h).
Rename the folder .mozilla to .mozilla.bck
Start FF, this will create automatically a new FF-profile.
Check.

To get back to your old profile:
Close FF.
Delete the new folder .mozilla
Rename the folder .mozila.bck back to .mozilla
Start FF. Done.

[greerd]

I don't use the Debian edition but I used to get the same problem (I don't recall if it was pre-mint 17 or not) but at the time I would just

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killall firefox-bin

OR incase that doesn't work. Running top or System Monitor should tell which one.

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killall firefox

so I didn't have to reboot. I know this is not a solution but can save you the inconvenience of rebooting just for firefox. Should work for thunderbird too. Nowadays firefox runs as firefox, not firefox-bin, I don't know if that's a clue or not, but I haven't had any problem since.

[abtygwyn]

Thanks.
Have followed instructions and everything still works, always a good sign, and I will have to wait to see whether or not the problem reoccurs.