Gfrktyl

I am trying to download the Firefox 52.9.0 ESR (32-bit) as it can run Java as a plugin in the browser. I've been doing this by taking the zip file from the archive, extracting it to my desired folder, then running firefox.exe. This works fine for the first session, but in order to complete installing the latest Java, I have to close Firefox and start a new session, upon which it automatically updates to Firefox Quantum 60.2.0 ESR, which I don't want. It does this even when I have set the update setting to 'ask for updates but let me choose to install' within the first session. How can I prevent this from happening, and instead keep Firefox 52.9.0 ESR?

EDIT: I fixed it by changing the update settings to 'never check for updates'. However, upon starting my 2nd session, it still tried to update, but gave an error something along the lines of 'update failed (failed to apply update patch)'. Luckily this error message doesn't seem to appear at the start of new sessions. Weird that it tries to automatically update, even though I've set it not to.

So you're connected to the internet when you first run the browser, it's initial settings are to update, so it updates while/before you can change the update settings.

How about just disconnect from the internet entirely (software disconnect, disable all networking, pull plug/adapter) for the first run, change the update settings & exit, then reconnect to the internet?

I need Java in my browser, and I have reluctantly abandoned Firefox in favour of the forks Waterfox and PaleMoon, both of which which retain the NPAPI support which Java needs.

Both run Firefox plug-ins, albeit not the latest versions, and it is these that have kept me in the Firefox family, rather than switching to Chrome - having got used to them, I find it difficult to manage without TabMixPlus, All-in-One Sidebar and FireFTP, in particular.

PaleMoon was forked earlier than Waterfox, but it has its own Add-ons site, and while I also use extensions from the main Mozilla extensions site, I need to search for compatible versions.

Waterfox is more recent and uses the standard Mozilla extensions site, and in many cases the latest versions will install, but being less established it has a few more quirks than PaleMoon.

As far as add-ons are concerned, most of the updates have been to handle Firefox updates, rather than security fixes, so I am not concerned at using earlier versions.

PaleMoon is 32/64-bit, while Waterfox is 64-bit only. On Windows there are install and portable versions - Waterfox portable is PortableApps-compatible, although for some reason is not included on the the PortableApps site, which means that it is adopted into the menu system, but doesn't update automatically. There are Linux versions of both and there are repositories available for Debian-derived systems.

Needless to say, using an outdated browser is a security risk, much like running Windows XP past April 2014. If you do not know how to mitigate known unpatched security bugs then you should not be using an unsupported web browser.

If you don't want a legacy browser updating by itself, then you need to turn off automatic updates before the browser ever gets online in the first place.

In your case, you should have entered the legacy FF's profile manager with the -P switch, created a new profile, and ticked [Work offline] before starting the browser, which would have given you time to disable automatic updates before the browser started downloading them in the background on first run.

Manual edits to the configuration files within the browser profile are unnecessary.

If you remove the Mozilla Maintenance service from the system, it won't update automatically.