355597 - Firefox not starting with the Talkback extension enabled

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[(no longer active)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060918 Firefox/2.0 XpcomViewer/0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060918 Firefox/2.0 XpcomViewer/0.9

I used the windowsupdate.com site to install a number of non-critical updates
(most of them for hardware such as WLAN card, modem, mouse, touchpad, etc.),
and I was prompted to restart the computer.  After the restart, Firefox wouldn't start.  Each attempt at starting Firefox would lead the firefox.exe process to terminate almost immediately, *without* causing a crash.  So, unfortunately, there are no talkback IDs to report.  Check out bug #355594 which is a similar problem on the same machine and at the same time happening with Thunderbird as well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to start Firefox.
2. Watch nothing happening (because the process is silently terminating.)
3. Start Firefox in Safe Mode.
4. Disable the Talkback extension.
5. Close Firefox.
6. Start Firefox in normal mode.
7. Watch the browser open fine.
8. Enable the Talkback extension.
9. Restart Firefox.
10. Watch nothing happening (like before.)

I could go on and on with the same procedure.




about:buildconfig

Build platform
target
i586-pc-msvc

Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TC -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TP -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)

Configure arguments
--enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=release --enable-official-branding --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-svg --enable-canvas --enable-update-packaging

Comment 1

[(no longer active)]

If it matters, I have SeaMonkey "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060729 SeaMonkey/1.0.4" installed, and this problem doesn't seem to affect it.

Comment 2

[Hermann Schwab]

What is happening if you disable your other extensions, but let Talkback be enabled?

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> What is happening if you disable your other extensions, but let Talkback be
> enabled?

As long as Talkback is enabled, the problem shows again (I've tried it with no other extensions enabled, as well as with individual extensions enabled.)

Comment 4

[(no longer active)]

I have observed the same problem in Firefox 3 alpha 1, and the trunk's nightly build.  Disabling the Talkback extension did solve the startup issue in these cases as well.

FWIW, there's a forum discussion <http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2649628>.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Ehsan, Does this also fail for you with current trunk?  (which uses breakpad instead of talkback)

cc: Carsten how commented in bug 349871

Comment 6

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Ehsan, Does this also fail for you with current trunk?  (which uses breakpad
> instead of talkback)

Nope.  I used to observe this problem on trunk when it used Talkback.  (I used to do my development on trunk with the Talkback extension disabled).  As soon as Breakpad was activated on the trunk, this problem no longer happens on trunk.  Updating the product version number of this bug.

> cc: Carsten how commented in bug 349871

FWIW, and just to reiterate: I observed this on a normal 32-bit XP Home installation (not x64).  And of course, since Talkback seemed to be the crasher itself, I could never get a Talkback ID for the crash!  :-)

Comment 7

[Jesse Ruderman on Windows]

Fixed by the removal of Talkback.