How to completely uninstall and reinstall Firefox?

How can I completely uninstall Firefox, then re-install? My brothers Firefox icon is just blank for some reason on the Unity sidebar. It launches but the icon is completely blank nothing there. If I uninstall this for him and then re-install will it work? Please help. I want to get this fixed for him.

Solution 1:

First try moving his profile data out of the way, it may be corrupted. One easy way to do it is to rename the .mozilla directory, on a terminal:

mv ~/.mozilla ~/mozilla-backup

When you restart Firefox it will rebuild a new profile.

If you want to completely wipe out and reinstall firefox, on the terminal do this:

sudo apt-get purge firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support

This will remove all traces of the Firefox system files. Then, to reinstall:

sudo apt-get install firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support

Solution 2:

You can reinstall firefox with the following command:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall firefox

If that doesn't help, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1898600