Firefox help wanted!

[venta]

This morning, Firefox is flatly refusing to load any pages - including my webmail, and the pages I need for work. All I'm seeing is the little pop-up box which says "this document contains no data".

In an attempt to fix this, I clicked on the little red update-icon, and it claimed it was downloading a file, but then couldn't complete the installation process. Restarting Windows and Firefox, I tried to download updates again, whereupon it said it couldn't find the update servers. The little red update-icon has, however, now gone away. Help->About Mozilla claims I'm now running version 1.0.3[*],so I guess the update has worked in some sense.

This document still contains no data, though.

I don't think my connection's at fault, because the likes of puTTy can talk to the outside world. So far, the only site Firefox will happily load appears to be livejounal. Does anyone have any suggestions ?

[*] Which I wasn't running before, and which was the version I was expecting to upgrade to, even though this page http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/start/#mBody (which I can load) advertsises v1.0.4 as an upgrade (which I can't download).

Update: I don't think it's Firefox's fault, actually, since IE can't load any of these pages either. At least IE behaves sensibly/gives error messages/tells me it can't download things :(

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I've had similar troubles with Firefox's automatic update just not doing anything. Downloading the latest version independently and installing it does the trick, but that and the security holes has robbed Firefox of the "it's wonderful in every way" sheen for me (tho' still my browser of choice).

[venta.livejournal.com]

My other Firefox-update gripe is that it mysteriously loses some settings every time (in particular, it loses the page you use as your home page, and resets it to some Mozilla nonsense).

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

(in particular, it loses the page you use as your home page, and resets it to some Mozilla nonsense).

My homepage is always set to blank, and I don't get this problem on upgrades. However, on the last (or so) dialog of the install process is a set of check boxes for things like "create start menu groups". One of these is "set my homepage to some Mozilla nonsense", so you should uncheck this when installing.

I can't say for sure you don't only get this dialog if you do a "custom" install, so it might be an idea to do that.

[venta.livejournal.com]

You do get this dialog on a non-custom install. I unchecked the box. It didn't make any difference.

Mind you, everything was a bit screwy this morning. It gets one more chance to prove it isn't stuffed.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

and the security holes

One difference between IE and Firefox: we know about a lot of the security issues with IE. There's no such thing as bug-free desktop software.