Firefox browser won't open fully
 

When I click on it all I get is a gray page. (see screenshot)

I can get Chrome.

I can't think of anything that has changed. All of my software is updated.

Thanks.

You can reset the profile.

Hi Gregg,
Try running firefox from a command line like this:
When the dialogue box pops up select the Default profile and click OK.
Do you still get the grey window shown in your post?
jdk

Hi Gregg...

If the above suggestions don't work, you can also try the "chosen solution" here by disabling hardware acceleration. :)

Let us know how it goes...

Regards...

Thanks but how do I re-set the profile if I can't get into the browser?

Did all that and yes, still get the grey window.

Hi ardvark. Thanks. I tried holding down the shift key while Firefox launched and I still got the gray screen.

I noticed (this has been since I went to Xubuntu 15.04) that I get vertical bars on the screen when the computer first starts up and lately (last five days or so) I've been getting little black horizontal bars that remain on the screen after a small window disappears. (Like if I right click to copy something, then black horizontal lines are in the space formerly occupied by "undo redo etc")

Maybe my computer can't effectively handle 15.04? But then Firefox has worked fine since April and Chrome still works.

so have you created a new user profile for firefox ?
if not please do so

Thanks but I couldn't get very far.

I found the Profile Manager via firefox -ProfileManager but I didn't see what creating a "new" profile would do. To me it just seemed like re-naming the default profile. (After you put the new name in, replacing the default, the next step was "finish.")

Might sound stupid, but are you running proprietary X drivers (AMD or Nvidia) and recently installed a new/updated version of the kernel? I've seen the proprietary drivers cause weirdness like this after installing a new kernel.

.mozilla renaming
 

I see that you have hundreds of posts here, and I have about 2, but here goes. A renamed or deleted .mozilla profile is created immediately upon opening a new instance of Firefox, (or any mozilla variant?). It exists as a hidden folder in the user's home. Renaming it (the old and supposedly faulty one) forces creation of it anew and very small, upon opening an instance of Firefox, after the renaming is done. (This has never required a terminal for me, it's available in the gui by hitting control + h to display hidden files). Sometimes the fresh .mozilla helps; and sometimes it's useless for fixing the problem. After FFox 39 came out, Abrowser (Trisquel linux) became useless (and a big time waster trying to fix) with "segmentation fault"; so I feel fortunate that Ice Cat was available, and seems to work fine (the special "high security" features are easily turned off).

Thanks Timothy. I don't know what my drivers are but I did just recently install a new kernel. So that could be it.

Thanks Lucas. I have hundreds of posts because I don't know what I'm doing! LOL Thanks, your explanation was very helpful. And a friend was telling me about trying something with the hidden mozilla file, so now I have a better understanding of what he was talking about. Appreciate it.

Basically there are two main areas where Firefox could go wrong.
1. Something in the configuration files which are kept in your ~/.mozilla file. This could be caused by any sort of faulty add-on, a bookmark, etc. Collectively, all these features together form a profile.
We test that by renaming the .mozilla file so that Firefox doesn't use it but rather creates a new one afresh. If the problem persists then we know that the problem is not something in the profile.
2. One of Firefox's program files is damaged. We can test if this is the case by doing a fresh install of Firefox.
Hopefully the problem is in one of these two categories and the fixing it is easy once it has been identified.
jdk