The Mozilla Foundation has released a hotfix for older versions of Firefox 10 through 28. Stable versions installed on Windows will need to have automatic updates enabled to get this hotfix.
Most Firefox installations are updated automatically thanks to the web browser's built-in update feature. Stable and beta versions of Firefox check for updates every 12 hours, while Nightly channel versions check for updates every two hours.
Firefox users and system administrators may have intentionally blocked automatic updates in the browser. It is usually not recommended, but some Firefox users do this to prevent certain major changes that the installation may make to their system or to the add-ons they use.
There is another reason why Firefox cannot be updated: the program hangs and does not download updates. About 2% of all Firefox installations are stuck on old versions due to this behavior.
The Mozilla Foundation had announced in May 2014 that it intended to deliver a hotfix for stable versions of the browser that did not yet have the latest version to resolve this issue.
What you need to know about the update
The hotfix applies to stable versions of Firefox 10 through 28. This means that pre-Firefox 10, Firefox ESR, Firefox Beta Nightly, and post-Firefox 28 installations will not receive the update.
Updates will only be offered to 32-bit versions of Windows XP SP2 and newer systems.
The hotfix will download the full Firefox installation package in the background and install it on the system to update the browser to the latest version.
Additional information about the hotfix is available here.
