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I'm using Firefox 3.6.6 on Windows XP and had a strange problem now: I worked on many pages during the day which were still using interactive popups (i.e. user has to click on image to popup opened with window.open) to display information (popups linking to bigger versions of images). So during the afternoon I opened like 60 of such popups but usually closed them immediately after verifying the content was there.

Before finishing work, I closed my last two normal browser windows (with their tabs, the other popups were long closed). Firefox was closed and that point and not running anymore (verified with task manager).

I had a reason do immediately start Firefox again when suddenly about 60 windows were opened:

Many open windows in taskbar

I closed them all manually and after re-starting Firefox, they're still there.

Firefox opened all Popups again I had open during the afternoon, even though I closed them long before finally closing the last window.

My settings are to open my windows from the last session, but that case the windows weren't open anymore when I shut down FF.

I managed to fix this by setting When Firefox starts to Show a blank page , shut down Firefox, start it. No further windows were opened. I than set When Firefox starts to Show my windows and tabs from last time

But how's that possible, some kind of bug or an error on my side?

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  • Just to be clear, were these popups that appeared automatically when you visited pages, or only opened (the first time) after you clicked on something (eg small image to get larger one)? – AdamV Jul 16 '10 at 16:10
  • @AdamV: the only open when I click on something (they're actually larger versions of images inside the page). Technically they're opened with window.open(this.href, width, height) – mark Jul 19 '10 at 10:18
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When Firefox shows your windows and tabs from last time, it reloads the pages in those windows. The pages presumably create the popups again when they are reloaded.

(On a similar note, I've accidentally re-purchased MP3s on Amazon this way, because Firefox reloading the purchase page on restart actually caused the song to be re-purchased. Fail.)

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  • The popups don't open automatically (see my other comment, I updated the Q too) – mark Jul 19 '10 at 10:18
  • Accepting this answer because it highlight a gotcha one wouldn't be aware of usually. – mark Sep 25 '10 at 20:16
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I had similar problems, and found out that for Firefox to forget all open windows, one has to close it from the menu with File / Exit. Any other type of close caused the windows to come back.

Did you use File / Exit to close the 60 windows?

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  • Yes, I did. I do this because I'm on multi-monitor and have two main windows for each monitor and doing File / Exit saves the position of both and not just the last one I closed. – mark Jul 19 '10 at 16:44
  • @mark: I would then tag this as an unreproducible bug in Firefox (unless it is reproducible ). – harrymc Jul 19 '10 at 19:48
  • It was reproducible the day I had it, but isn't anymore. I consider it gone. – mark Sep 25 '10 at 20:16

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