Understanding Firefox Safe Mode and When to Use It

You probably know about the famous (or infamous as the case may be) Windows Safe Mode. Whenever the Windows operating system goes haywire and suffers random crashes and BSOD, it’s always advisable to tackle them using the Safe Mode. In this mode, Windows has reduced functionality with bare minimum devices and application software services running in the background to enable you to diagnose the problem without the crashes.

So that was about solving Windows crashes, but that’s not what I will be talking about today. That was just an introduction I gave before I could start on with the Safe Mode feature of Firefox and how you can you use the feature to rectify the problem when it starts crashing suddenly.

The Safe Mode feature of Firefox runs the browser with all the add-ons, themes and Java Scripts disabled. With all the scripts and extensions disabled, Firefox Safe Mode makes it easier to pinpoint the exact problem. To start Firefox in Safe Mode, open the Run command, type in firefox.exe –safemode and press enter to show up the Firefox Safe Mode dialog window.

On this window, you can either disable few things manually and start the browser in normal mode or just press the Continue button to start the Safe Mode.

In the Safe Mode, Firefox will look as good as new with all the add-ons and themes disabled. As most of the Firefox crashes are due to incompatible and unstable add-ons, head over to the add-ons tab to disable some of your latest installed add-ons. You may need to use trial and error over here to figure out the linchpin.

You can now simply exit the Safe Mode and try to run the browser normally. The best chances are that your browser will be fixed. If not, try disabling all the add-ons the next time. Still if the problem persists, you can backup all your Firefox personal settings and go for reinstallation (that should be the last resort).

Sometimes, Firefox may go in a Safe Mode loop even after you exit it. To solve the problem, end any running processes of Firefox using the task manager, or simply restart your computer.

If it was Chrome, I would have simply told you to sync all the Chrome data to the clouds using your Google account and then reinstall the browser but sadly, Firefox has no easy way to backup all the personal data and add-ons, and thus it’s always advisable to hunt for and solve the problem before taking stringent measures.