Firefox/Thunderbird already running but not responding

Firefox and Thunderbird can sometimes give this error when you restart a linux box or when you try to make multiple log ins into a shared file system. The result is that Firefox/Thunderbird will not open. The causes for this are not entirely clear to me but I found a solution. Simply delete the .parentlock file in both cases and restart the service. Locations for this file are as follows:
Firefox: ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxx.default/.parentlock
Thunderbird: ~/.thunderbird/xxxxx.default/.parentlock
Since both the folders and files start with a dot, they are not visible with a simple
ls -lrt
You have to use
ls -lrta