Windows 7: Firefox exe. missing

For some reason my Firefox browser stopped running...completely and won't open, I double-clicked and still nothing. So of course I decided to uninstall Firefox and restart my computer. I reinstalled Firefox and still nothing. So I thought it might have been something wrong with the processes, so I went to the task manager and I couldn't find the Firefox exe. and I never even ended the process in the first place. The only time the Firefox executable file will appear is if I use the 64-bit version of 3.6 Firefox, but I don't want to use that version. How can I recover that certain Firefox exe. so I can use 32-bit Firefox. Please help, I'm dying without Firefox; I'm using Google Chrome for the time being.

Have you tried redownloading it?

What happens when you run the .exe directly?

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe (or just \Program Files\ if using x32)

Does it run if you right-click icon > properties > compatability 'run this program as an Administrator'


Will it run in Firefox Safemode?

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode



Did you install any add-ons before it stopped working?

Did you install any other updates, like drivers etc?


Depending on the cause, uninstalling Firefox won't help as it leaves all the data behind in:

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Mozilla
C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla

(The Appdata folder is a hidden folder by default)

To completely remove and re-install Firefox freshly, you need to uninstall the app first and then delete those folders.

(*NB you will lose all your bookmarks, settings etc if those folders are deleted - make a copy of those folders if the issue is not with FF itself. To restore, simply copy+paste them back into place)