Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration

First, today is Firefox Download Day. Get Fx3 if you haven’t yet.

On my laptop, opening Firefox would show me a “Chrome Registration Failed” error.

Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration. Please contact the author about this problem.

OK

It would show me the same error 2, 3, or 4 times before starting Firefox. Then, it would show the “Add-ons” box and ask me to Restart Firefox to complete the installation. But restarting would just give me the same behavior again.

Under Windows Vista, the solution is to run Firefox in Administrator Mode, just once. Then the error won’t come back, and you don’t need to keep running it in Administrator mode.

To do this, right-click a Firefox shortcut and choose Run as administrator.

23 Responses to “Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration”

  1. ben says:

    Thanks for the firefox error tip, worked like a charm.

  2. sk says:

    indeed the error tip worked.
    However the thing is that I suddenly got this error today, after using ff 3 for a couple of weeks. What gives?
    And one worrying thing is that when you get the message you also get a add-ons window opened saying that 1 add-on has been succeefully installed when I haven’t installed any extensions for the past few days already..

  3. Padraic says:

    Thanks for the tip. Best on the web

  4. Charlie says:

    Man thank you for this, works perfect now. I searched all through the web and you were the only one who had a decent, straight forward answer.

    Thanks again.

  5. Christine A says:

    I tried that also, which it did work.

    However, I still get that popup whenever I start a new session the next day. It doesn’t fix it permanently!!!

  6. Flying says:

    Thank you a lot! It fixed my problem with Think Vantage Password Manager plugin on my Lenovo(IBM) Laptop with a fingerprint.

  7. Helen says:

    Thanks! It worked for me.

  8. Audie says:

    This doesn’t work for XP. Can’t run as Admin. Help

  9. dwc_waterloo says:

    Awesome!!! Worked great! Thank you!

  10. jezterking says:

    HELP!! I did this and now I don’t get the error messages but I don’t have my bookmarks either!!!!! When I try to import bookmarks the only page I get is the startup bookmark page to get bookmarks and learn how to load them! This is BAD! I need those bookmarks and now they are gone.

    PLEASE HELP!!

  11. joe says:

    this was the solution for my ff problem on vista. thanks!

    mozilla team: you MUST make sure things like this don’t happen! you can’t expect an average user to search the web for very obscure error messages in order to solve the problem in a rather unexpected way. as a first work-around, how about prompting the user to run firefox as administrator for once instead of displaying a cryptic, technical message several times? later you should switch to admin mode automatically in such a case, or even better: avoid admin rights being required for such a trivial thing such as an updated addon

    • Heather says:

      Joe, I think its wonderful for you to expand your feedback beyond the “band-aid” they gave us, to the root of problem. Thank you.

  12. sashanka says:

    Thank you very much guys. It worked. fantastic.

  13. Joseph says:

    Firefox could not install this item because of a failure in Chrome Registration. Please contact the author about this problem.

  14. Doug says:

    That was easy!

    Thanks for the tip. It works for Windows 7 as well.

    I tried uninstalling and reinstalling FireFox and that didn’t work

    Your simple procedure worked great!

    Back to normal with FireFox, what a relief!

  15. sagar says:

    worked like a charm babay.

    thanks a lot

  16. Viral says:

    Thanks, this is the first time that a fix actually worked first time :) .

  17. theresa says:

    Th run as administrator worked once then reverted back to the same message.

  18. Cased says:

    Thank you… I was going CRAZY trying to figure out what was going wrong. Tried a few online help chats and NO ONE could help me! Glad it’s over!!

    BIG THANK YOU!!!!

  19. Chris says:

    THANK YOU…error has been bugging me for a couple days now…worked perfect!

  20. doyle says:

    vista/windows 7 permanent solution: find firefox.exe . right click and choose ‘properties.’ at the bottom, you’ll see ‘run this program as an administrator.’ this will solve the problem and avoid the additional step of having to right click and choose this option everytime you open the program.

    note: keep an eye out for any privileges this would give firefox that you would normally have to confirm.

  21. gail says:

    Great tip, doyle!
    None of the other suggestions worked including the ‘run as administrator’ since that is where it started…

  22. Michael says:

    fix works on x200t thinkpad password manager, great work! thanks!

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