Come on, Firefox!
October 14, 2007 – 12:34 am
I thought we had something special. You were always such a good little app. Why’d you have to go and ruin our relationship? Why?!
Alas, all good things must come to an end (at least temporarily).
I installed an updated version of LogMeIn’s plugin for Firefox only to be bombarded with a message stating something like so:
A previous instance of Firefox needs to finish installing updates. Firefox can not start.
Please note that it is a paraphrase and the actual message was significantly more maddening. I tried several more times. No luck. I even tried to restart the computer. No luck. Finally I gave in, downloaded the most recent version of Firefox using Internet Explorer 7, and reinstalled Firefox.
At least everything is still intact, but what a horrible failure on Mozilla’s part to handle that issue correctly. At the least it could have tried to repair the installation. Don’t make me use my nemesis (IE) to download a program that I specifically got so I didn’t have to use IE ever again!
Mozilla - if you’re listening, do something about this bug. I’m not the only person with this issue: http://techpatterns.com/forums/about372.html.
Update:
I attempted to run Firefox again the following morning and had the same issue. I guess reinstalling didn’t really fix anything! To solve the problem, now that I had the exact error message (see below), I used the instructions found here. Maybe I should restart Firefox and make sure it still works.
Error Message: The program must close to allow a previous installation attempt to complete. Please restart.
How I fixed the problem:
- End all xpicleanup processes using Task Manager.
- Open My Computer and enter %APPDATA% in the address bar.
- This is where my directions deviate from the website referenced above. When I went to %APPDATA% I was one level too deep to navigate to “Local”. So, go up one level, then navigate to Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
- Delete xpicleanup.dat
Firefox should be good to go!
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