Mozilla Software → [FireFox] Firefox ignoring startup option..

this literally just started about 30 minutes ago..

when I shut down Firefox, and start it up, it will load any and all previous websites - multiple tabs as well..

I have FF configured to load a single page when it starts - it seems to be ignoring that and choosing to load the last page(s) that were loaded.

I checked task manager and no instances of firefox.exe running after closing the session. This has persisted across reboots and even upgrading from 17.0.1 to 18.0.. I tried setting FF to open a blank page or a different page - it keeps coming back to opening the last page(s) visited.

Nothing was installed or changed on the system.. that is unless when I went to take a shit 30 minutes ago a gremlin came in and changed something..

thoughts?

What extensions installed?

A session manager?

TabMixPlus, maybe?

nothing like that..

New Tab Homepage, and Undo Closed Tabs are the only two that would relate to session and or tabs..

Again, not a single thing was added or changed, no updates no nothing prior to this just suddenly starting all on it's own.

Oh wait, There was one thing tho that happened about an hour prior to this, Windows 8 went crazy and blanked out all the desktop icons, clearing the IconCache.db solved that. I don't see that having anything to do with FF reloading the previous session, especially considering that it didn't happen immediately after the icon "crash".

It's like that instead of a clean shutdown, it's acting as if the browser is crashing.

For things to "happen out of the blue" something must have changed..check startup options
»support.mozilla.org/en-U ··· ast-time

been there done that.. changed it to restore session, tried set to load blank page then set it back to load a different home page.

fyi, each time I changed those settings, I shut down firefox and made sure no instances were running before running again - each time, no matter what the setting is, it will start loading whatever the last viewed web pages were.

question.. what is this Mozilla Maintenance Service?

it was installed today with one of the updates (FF or TB), not sure which.. never saw it on my system before today.

could this be the culprit?

hmm, nope.. the service isn't running.

add: I even reset the prefs.js (shutdown FF, moved prefs.js elsewhere and restarted FF to regenerate) - same thing..

it seems to be reading /writing and following changes made to prefs.js, except it is insisting on restoring the previous session rather than the home page.

next place I can only think to look is in the Windows registry..

Firefox 12 for Windows added the Mozilla Maintenance Service. Been there for a long time.

Try using Help (from browser) Mozilla Support help (+search) or google, for basic operating/feature information:
»support.mozilla.org/en-U ··· -service

I think I found the problem.

found in user.js :

user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once", true);

not sure where this came from or what put it there, but changing this to false solved the problem..

I think maybe Norton is the culprit, based on what about:config shows..

final update.. I ended up just deleting that user.js entry, as setting "user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once", false);" had the effect to start with the home page no matter what, even if an intentional restart (to load/refresh an add-in for example) was performed..

right now I have FF back to where it was.. a new start it will load the set homepage and only that page, on a crash/restart it will load whatever pages were open at the time.

still don't know what put that entry in.. I may find out as I am troubleshooting another strange issue and I removed NIS in the process. I guess I'll know the culprit for sure if when I reinstall the entry comes back.