Mozilla has introduced a new feature ^[1] called "Crash Protection" in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4 ^[2]. Crash Protection runs using Out-of-process-plugins ^[3], which basically runs the plugins as separate processes from the main Firefox process. This allows Mozilla to recover from plugin crashes without freezing the entire browser.

However, not many users like this new feature and one of commentators recently asked ^[4] whether it was possible to disable crash protection because it froze the browser. Well the answer is that, yes you can disable crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6, however, you will have to do so manually.

How To Disable Crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6

Step 1: In the browser location bar type "about:config" without the quotes and hit enter or return key.

Step 2: If you are doing this for the first time, you will see a warning saying "You may void your warranty!", you need to press the button "I’ll be careful, I promise" to move to the configuration for Firefox.

Step 3: Once you have clicked the button you will see a lot of strings out there which might not make any sense. Don’t worry about it. In the "Filter" textbox type "plugins" without the quotes and hit enter. The process is slightly different for Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4, follow the appropriate steps given below.

Once you perform the search, right click on the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled string and click "Toggle", you only have to do this if the value for the string is true, if it is false, the Crash Protection is already disabled.

With Firefox 3.6 you will also need to disable Crash protection for Individual items. If you want to disable Crash protection for Individual items, you can use the following mapping and toggle the respective values to false.

• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll (Microsoft Silverlight)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll (Apple QuickTime)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (Adobe Flash)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll (NPAPI test plugin)

That’s about it, using the above steps you can disable or enable Crash protection in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4. Firefox 4 does not have options to individually turn the plugins Crash Protection off yet, but it may be added in the final version.