21 May 2017

How to prevent Firefox from being automatically updated ?

WARNING!  Do not use out of date Firefox for anything than run the test! Shitware can screw your PC badly and you don't want have trouble at work, do you? Don't believe me, check recent news about WANNACRY which attack Windows that haven't been updated for just 2 months!

STORY:
        I am back-end developer. On rare occasion, I am invited to do some basic front end stuff. I have done my ticket. I needed to run the test now to ensure that I didn't break this fragile AngularJs code. It turns out that I need to have a specific version of Firefox. The problem is Firefox is the maniac about updating itself to the newest version which is a great thing! Unfortunately, it was a problem in my case. So what to do?

SOLUTION:


I did these steps and my Firefox was cured of obsession to update itself.

  1.  Install older version of Firefox (https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/)
  2.  Install as usual (DO NOT SELECT check for update).
  3. DO NOT RUN after installation.
  4. Go to the installation folder and delete these files:
  5. delete update.exe
  6. delete updater.ini
  7. delete update-settings.ini
  8. delete maintenanceservice.exe
  9. Uninstall Maintance Service (if installed)
  10. Run Firefox.
  11. Go to settings and disable auto update.
  12. Done!

        From now. Firefox will not start the auto update on run and Firefox will be unable to auto update itself in any way. Yes, Firefox has other ways to figure out that update is required. For example, when you click on "About Firefox". Don't panic! It will download a new version and then failed to run the updater. As a side effect, you will get an error message.

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