I recently reinstalled my entire gentoo system. Everything went over fine with one exception. Firefox refuses to show its windows. I get the standard "No running windows found" message on the console, it even connects to my homepage as I can see from netstat, but the damn window refuses to show up. I've strace'd it and see it's is sitting in some poll() loop. I have been reading forum posts on here, gentoo, and mozilla.org for hours upon hours. I have tried all the steps on mozilla.org for trying to fix this problem (deleting localstore and etc). I have removed the entire /usr/lib64/MozilaFirefox and ~/.mozilla directories and complete rebuilt firefox from scratch TWICE. I have no idea where to proceed from here. For crapsngiggles I decided to give plain old mozilla a try, and I have the exact same result. Any ideas. I'm on amd64 by the way, 2.6.12 kernel.

Are you using fedora core 4 rpms and installing them with package manager. What happened when they stopped working were you loading a plugin.
Almost all problems are caused by not installing them properly.
yum remove mozilla
Yum remove firefox
yum remove java
yum update firefox
yum update mozilla
Using rpm files you have to install all packages.
When mozilla is loaded and working click on tools and plugins. For instructions.
When you open a terminal type in su
Then your superuser password them yum.
You can use applications and redhat update. then follow instructions. Check the mozila and firefox boxes. Use the software tools as you aren't getting success with what you are doing.
gzip -d package.tar.gz
tar xvf package.tar
Then find install file and run it. Then press enter when it says more until you sign license agreement.
If you find 3 gears with mozilla or firefox click on it then run in terminal. This would be in your home directory. It may be installed.
It may be easier for you to reinstall fedora and install firefox from your cd-roms. Until you are familiar with linux it is easier to use update and rpm files. The tar files are installed in different directories and your links don't work.
You could download a rpm file for opera software. so you have a good working browser.

I have been having the same problem after installing debian etch on my new amd64 pc (kernel 2.6.12). Sometimes the firefox window does not show up. ps -e shows that it is running somewhere, but is not visible on any of my desktops. After reboot it usually works, sometimes I have to reboot more than once. Could it be something to do with amd64? I never had this problem on debian with my old 686.

Nah it's gentoo. Sorry I thought I stuck that in there, was late

I installed gnome and the firefox issue seems to have gone away. Maybe something with fluxbox or with amd64 compatibility. Anyway, I like gnome and may stick with it for a while.

Which gnome package(s)?

I emerged gnome base, and still nothing. This is ridiculous. Does anyone have a clue WTF is going on here?

I am pretty much using the gnome desktop now and firefox seems to be completely stable. I think if you just apt-get install gnome it will install everything that you need. If you use aptitude or synaptic you should be able to see what else is getting install with gnome. Make sure you have gdm intstalled and reboot. You should be able to choome gnome in the gdm menu when you log in. That is if you want to use gnome.

Nah I can't stand gnome. I emerged the packages the other day, freaking installed 110 damn dependencies just to get gnome on, and firefox still doesn't work. There's no way I'm switching to gnome desktop just to placate retarded firefox. I'm using opera now, but this is BS. I have no idea what to even try doing.

Too bad, I'm glad my firefox works with gnome. I simply could not stand being forced to use opera. You might try epiphany browser, but being a part of gnome will probably require quite a few dependencies.

I'd almost bet it has something to do with both of us using 64bit machines. But you would think that any problems would be resolved by rebuilding from source. I guess not.

Try starting firefox from a console. It should give a useful error message.

I guess that it is missing a pango file, but the error message from the console will tell us.

In my case there was no error message when starting from the console. Firefox was then running as a proccess, but the window did not show up.