Advice Request Solution - FF browser closed but it's still running in the background

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HarborFront

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Oct 9, 2016
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I'm using FF Quantum v61.0.1 and I was suddenly hit by it yesterday after running FF for so long without issue. You can check with Task Manager to see that FF is still running despite the browser's being closed

You can either close FF in the Task Manager or open FF on your desktop whereby a pop up meassage will appear telling you the old FF session is still running and you'll need to close it.

The problem I brought up is an age-old problem with FF. Previous versions also suffer from it and there are even specific fixes for some versions.

The below steps which I have tried won't work out

1) Disabled all extensions
2) Defaulting all modified preferences
3) Uninstall and reinstall FF

Don't panic!! Below are the step I took to solve it.

1) Go to the top right corner and click on the hamburger (3 bars) menu
2) Go to ==> Help ==> Troubleshooting Information ==> Application Basics ==> Profile Folder
3) Click on Open Folder and it'll open File Explorer to C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\fxi5bfyx.default
4) Close FF
5) Look for prefs file and rename to prefs.old (when FF restarts it'll create a new prefs file)
6) Close File Explorer and restart FF
7) Go to ==> Options ==> Privacy & Security ==> History and set Firefox will Never Remember History. In short, you're runnnig in Private Browsing mode

The problem looks like if you set "Use custom settings for history" and tick "Clear history when Firefox closes" which I used previously all the while

8) Exit FF and restart
9) Check to make sure Firefox will Never Remember History has been set
10) You can confirm in Task Manager that FF is no longer running in the background after you close the browser

Note :- After this process you'll need to re-apply all the preferences
 
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