shortcut for Firefox issue

rfuerst911sc · 12-19-2011, 05:58 PM

Today out of the blue my Firefox shortcut icon doesn't work. When I double click on it a message box opens up asking which application should be used to open ( example Adobe ) ??? When I right mouse button click on the icon and hit start it opens up fine. I did get a security warning this morning when I was on the Duramax website, supposedly due to a new ad they had. I've run all my virus software and a few items were found and neutralized and the computer is working fine. It is a Toshiba laptop if that matters with Windows 7 . Any ideas what's going on with the shortcut ?

John Rogers · 12-19-2011, 06:04 PM

Is this the only app that has started doing this? Does this happen with Internet Explorer? Right click on the icon and see if the desktop can find the application and also see if you can change the icon and see what happens?

Zeke · 12-19-2011, 06:13 PM

I don't know a damn thing about computers but that does sound like a virus not caught. Hang on for a few until SLODave or Stomach gets this (amongst many others; those are just the 2 I thought of).

Joeaksa · 12-19-2011, 06:30 PM

Have you run virus and mal-ware scans? Do it from "safe mode"...

onewhippedpuppy · 12-19-2011, 07:21 PM

I started having all sorts of buggy issues with Firefox a while back, multiple updates failed to fix it. It was on multiple computers so I know it wasn't virus related. I switched to Chrome and all is well.

Joeaksa · 12-19-2011, 07:25 PM

I use Chrome at times as well but its a memory hog. Open a tab, do some work then close it down and Chrome does not release the memory. Finally it starts running slow as its tying things up...

Scott R · Scott R's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc

Today out of the blue my Firefox shortcut icon doesn't work. When I double click on it a message box opens up asking which application should be used to open ( example Adobe ) ??? When I right mouse button click on the icon and hit start it opens up fine. I did get a security warning this morning when I was on the Duramax website, supposedly due to a new ad they had. I've run all my virus software and a few items were found and neutralized and the computer is working fine. It is a Toshiba laptop if that matters with Windows 7 . Any ideas what's going on with the shortcut ?

You should browse to c:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox.exe when it asks you which program to open. That will re-associate the icon with the program. You can also create a "new shortcut" from the "firefox.exe" file and copy that to the desktop.

As to why it happened... Sometimes the registry was changed on pc's sometimes the symbolic links on Mac's, but the net of this is that the icon no longer links to it's application. Sometimes it's a virus, malicious code, poor programming, lots of things.

rfuerst911sc · 12-20-2011, 06:15 AM

This morning I did a system restore back to 12/15 and everything seems to be working again. I'm running my Kaspersky security software right now to see if it catches anything. Looks like I'm back up and running. Thanks for the replies.