93889 - Getting "Error creating browser instance"

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect, P2)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

When I log into my Win2k system I get the following mozilla error alert:
"Error creating browser instance"

I use Mozilla Quick Launch. I'll attach a ascreen shot of the alert.

Build 20010805 on Win2k

I'm always using the win32 installer to install Mozilla.

Comment 1

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: Screenshot of error alert

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

I saw this alert a few times. 
It crashes my debug build but after I fixed a problem with the FS on drive C:
the error is gone.

see bug 93684 (marked worksforme after this seem to be fixed for me and the
reporter)
BTW: I don't use quicklaunch

Comment 3

[Henrik Gemal]

btw: I have two profiles.

Now I'm getting the "error creating browser instance" everytime I click on the 
Mozilla icon in the system tray.

Comment 4

[RC]

Reproduced on WinXP 2001080603, with and without Quick Launch.

Occasionally happens when using the component bar too.
Don't recall seeing the error on 0.9.2

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

XP Apps

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

reassigning to turbo folx.

Comment 7

[John Morrison]

I've seen this happen without quick launch, although I don't have a specific 
recipe to trigger it.

Comment 8

[Blake Ross]

Me too and... me neither.

Comment 9

[:deanis74]

Same for me.  I don't use quick launch, I just run it straight off a desktop 
icon.

The error most likely is raised here:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/xpfe/browser/resources/content/navigator
.js#245

Comment 10

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 94178 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Paul Chen]

nav triage team:

Welcome back bug for Bill Law. Marking nsbeta1+, p2, and mozilla0.9.4.
Reassigning to law

Comment 12

[John Morrison]

I spent a little (monotonous, repetitive) time reproducing this
with a few extra error messages added to navigator.js.

This is failing because |getWebNavigation()| is failing here:

function getWebNavigation()
{
  try {
    return getBrowser().webNavigation;
  } catch (e) {
    alert(e);
    return null;
  }
}

|gBrowser|, which is the return value of |getBrowser()|, is a valid
XUL element (for the <browser> element in navigator.xul) but the
exception thrown for getBrowser().webNavigation is this:

   "TypeError: this.docShell has no properties"

Blake. Jag. Vend me a clue. Any ideas on what's going wrong?

... and while I'm here, when is Bill back? This needs a fix before 0.9.4, and
if he's not back until the end of the month, when 9.4 is closing, then ...

Comment 13

[jag (Peter Annema)]

It seems like the xbl browser binding wasn't bound to the browser xul element.
Is this element hidden in some way?

Comment 14

[John Morrison]

Hidden? How do you mean? This error occurs when just starting the browser in 
the normal default way (e.g., create a brand new profile, and then restart it
until you get this error).

Maybe this is related/the-same-as bug 93558 (and kin) which I traced down to a 
failure to pull resources out of jar files (I think). So, if the .css that does
the XBL binding isn't loaded then when navigator.xul|js does its onload 
processing, the <browser> is not fully set up.

Comment 15

[[e-mail]]

I agree. Sometimes I see windows with parts of chrome loaded.

When I get this error, rather than clicking OK, you can start Mozilla again first
It tells the original Mozilla to open a new browser window which is quicker.

Comment 16

[Blake Ross]

smoketest blocker per drivers.

Comment 17

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

OK, on second thoughts, maybe this doesn't need to be a blocker.  How frequently
does this problem happen?  (Could it be related to stylesheets loading
asynchronously, the same reason as bug 70258?)

Comment 18

[John Morrison]

I think this went away with the fix for bug 93558 (the follow-on to bug bug 
70258). Or, to be specific, I had a trunk build where I was always hitting 
this error; after I updated to pick up the fix for 93558, all my problems 
went away and I haven't seen this since. [If I do see it again, I will come
back in full whine-mode, but till then :-].

Comment 19

[John Morrison]

Waahh! 2001-08-14-12-trunk and 2001-08-14-06-trunk win2k won't even start; 
always this error.

Comment 20

[John Morrison]

But mozilla build 2001-08-14-12-trunk on win2k starts with no problem. (???)

Comment 21

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

This works for me, after 93588 is fixed
I never seen this error again...

Comment 22

[Daniel (Leaf) Nunes]

the 08-14-12 build has the new nsprpub, perhaps this is fixed by some magic in nspr?

Comment 23

[John Morrison]

I'm running both the 8-14-12 spins for mozilla and commercial on win2k. 
The commercial build is **** out with this error (almost) every time,
while the mozilla build never hits this error. I found that if I dropped
the mozilla comm.jar into the commercial chrome, the commercial build 
would run.

Then I realized that in the console, I had an XML error for the commercial
comm.jar: 

XML Error in file 'chrome://communicator/content/communicatorOverlay.xul', Line
Number: 134, Col Number: 29, Description: undefined entity
Source Line:                     hidden="&hideNet2phoneButton;"/>

I corrected that file (by hard-coding 'true' ... there is no 
&hideNet2phoneButton; entity in any DTD that I can find. With that sole
change in the commercial chrome, the build never (yet) hits this 'Error 
creating browser instance'. So, this looks like the fix for commercial builds.

I think that this bug was fixed in the mozilla builds with the fix for bug 
93588, but that left this recent change in the commercial bits. [Er, well, 
that's what it looks like to me from empirical evidence, but the fix for 
bug 93588 was in CSSFrameConstructor, and this "fix" is to correct an XML
error in chrome -- not what you would think of as related in any way].

Comment 24

[matt]

checked in fix for this.  It's a netscape only bug.  by the way net2phone does 
not exist.

Comment 25

[matt]

.

Comment 26

[Scott Tran (Wildcard)]

*** Bug 95316 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 27

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

matt says "fix checked in; it's a netscape only bug".  Why then did I just have
it happen on my mozilla daily win32 build from 2001081003?  No quick load,
Win98, installed from installer.

I suggest reopening unless there's proof that the bug was fixed in the mozilla
(not netscape) tree.

Comment 28

[John Morrison]

> mozilla daily win32 build from 2001081003?

Yes, this bug was in the mozilla trunk builds at that time. I believe it 
was fixed in bug 93588 (see comments above). However, it continued to show up 
in commercial Netscape builds today, until Matt checked in some missing XML 
entities.

I think it is better to reopen this bug, if and when it is reproduced in 
a current trunk build (as opposed to having an open smoketest-blocker, 
tree-closer bug which no one can positively reproduce anymore).

Comment 29

[jag (Peter Annema)]

I think jrgm meant bug 93558 :-)

Comment 30

[Grace Bush]

am seeing this with mozilla build from last week
On my Win2k machine I had one profile set up so I could run turbo- 
was running turbo on a mozilla build
 Then I added a profile to test mail setup in Netscape 6- yesterday
 Today I deleted the mail profile  and tried to launch  with the profile that 
has turbo on.
 bingo....alert came up - error creating browser instance.
I can launch using mozilla -console 

Comment 31

[:deanis74]

last week?  Makes sense.  Bug 93558 was only fixed two days ago.  Try it with a
current build.

Comment 32

[Paul Wyskoczka]

Using the 2001081504 build on Windows I no longer see the problem.

Comment 33

[John Morrison]

Okay, let's call this a wrap. Reopen as required :-]