866037 - Firefox AND Thunderbird crashing EMPTY/mozalloc_abort via UTF8ToNewUnicode and nsACString_internal::Assign.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[tnetcenter]

Attachment: vprot.exe

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0
Build ID: 20130409194949

Steps to reproduce:

I tried Firefox in safe mode initially, it still crashed within a couple of minutes of booting up.  If Thunderbird is running it ALSO CRASHES!

I examined Task Manager and determined that Vprot.exe was consuming excessive CPU resources, so I unloaded it and after that both Thunderbird and Firefox stabilized and started behaving properly.


Actual results:

Firefox started crashing frequently and if Thunderbird was running also, IT CRASHED too!!


Expected results:

Both applications should have operated together and seperately as they have been prior to today.

Comment 1

[tnetcenter]

The latest update to Firefox has been crashing occasionally.  Parallel to that I've noticed that this vprot.exe application has started consuming a lot of cpu resources (I'm running on a 1.8 GHz P4 with Win XP Home SP3 so I routinely monitor system processes and sometimes shutdown problem apps).

Today it seemed to get worse to the point where Firefox started crashing frequently and if Thunderbird (also latest version) was running, it would crash also, but seemed to be stable if run by itself.

The problem became so bad, that I started troubleshooting it, by running Firefox in Safe Mode - it still crashed often. I then killed the vprot.exe process and the system has stabilized and both Firefox and Thunderbird are now running properly.

There should be a series of crash reports related to this problem and as near as I can tell, the vprot.exe process has been on my system for some time and never caused any issues prior to this.

Comment 2

[tnetcenter]

One other point:  Rebooting the system several times made no difference, neither did running Advanced System Care to clean up things (this usually solves instability on this system).  Computer has been running reliably for over 10 years, but of course requires regular maintenance, clean-up, etc.

Comment 3

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Please provide the crash ID (bp-...) from the about:crashes page.

Check for malware (see https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware#w_how-do-i-get-rid-of-malware).

Comment 4

[tnetcenter]

Here are the crash ID's since the first of the year.  The ones for this month will be applicable.

bp-02d699cd-fcf8-4e19-8d42-facf821304264/26/201312:15 AM
bp-5951256e-f815-45cf-a270-b91ae21304264/26/201312:03 AM
bp-42be29e4-d0bf-4cb0-83c9-4d3b721304264/25/201311:20 PM
bp-dae3e513-a0f4-4b80-bca7-f67bb21304264/25/201311:16 PM
bp-e994e1fb-a23b-4d8b-8525-d69c421304264/25/201311:15 PM
b26a682d-ee94-4356-b2c5-3d401e54e2ac-browser4/21/201312:11 AM
b26a682d-ee94-4356-b2c5-3d401e54e2ac4/21/201312:11 AM
3d10d3dd-5d3a-4020-b529-c4228869f6774/20/20131:40 AM
3c3300f7-e19c-4894-be5c-e1da75764556-browser4/20/20131:39 AM
3c3300f7-e19c-4894-be5c-e1da757645564/20/20131:39 AM
4beaa489-50ea-45de-b24b-86661d3913f9-browser4/18/20134:42 PM
4beaa489-50ea-45de-b24b-86661d3913f94/18/20134:42 PM
bp-fa96c18e-c2e2-46af-a12d-c01d321304094/9/201312:09 AM

Comment 5

[Scoobidiver (away)]

In a linkable way:
bp-02d699cd-fcf8-4e19-8d42-facf82130426
bp-5951256e-f815-45cf-a270-b91ae2130426
bp-42be29e4-d0bf-4cb0-83c9-4d3b72130426
bp-dae3e513-a0f4-4b80-bca7-f67bb2130426
bp-e994e1fb-a23b-4d8b-8525-d69c42130426

There are crashes with corrupt dump or on abort.

I see suspicious DLLs. Check for malware: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware#w_how-do-i-get-rid-of-malware

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

tnetcenter, could you post some of your thunderbird crash IDs?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #5)
> I see suspicious DLLs. Check for malware:
> https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-
> malware#w_how-do-i-get-rid-of-malware

Scoobidiver, which dlls are you referring to?

Comment 8

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)
> Scoobidiver, which dlls are you referring to?
ShellEh427.dll 			
CTAGENT.DLL 	1.0.0.3 		
LGMSGHK.DLL 	1.1.0.0 		
PTD.dll 	1.4.3.0
LgWndHk.dll 	9.79.25.1

Comment 9

[tnetcenter]

I've thoroughly examined my system for malware using multiple utilities, I run ZoneAlarm for a firewall and I use AVG for anti-virus protection.  The dll's listed above are all normal dll's (the first 3 are made by Creative Technologies and are associated with my sound card, the LgWndHk.dll file is used by my video card NVidia) and PTD.dll is used by various system apps).

What Crash ID's are you looking for me to provide??  I posted everything from the first of the year.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to tnetcenter from comment #9)
> What Crash ID's are you looking for me to provide??  I posted everything
> from the first of the year.

I'm looking for Thunderbird crash IDs. Comment 5 has only firefox crash IDs

Comment 11

[tnetcenter]

Here are the Thunderbird crash IDs:

bp-15a66153-33d4-418f-aaad-ec26e2130421
bp-25dffeb9-97d2-4513-a03a-420112130710
bp-2222cd9a-477d-4a94-b312-1593b2130426
bp-b45b2ab9-2430-43cf-9f39-183562130618

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

What does AVG have to say about this?

Comment 13

[tnetcenter]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #12)
> What does AVG have to say about this?

Since I'm no longer using vprot.exe and both Firefox and Thunderbird continue to crash occasionally, I don't think AVG is the ultimate source of the problem.  I do know that running vprot.exe makes the problem much worse and that I didn't have any problems until the more recent Firefox and Thunderbird updates were installed.  There may be a memory leakage issue as well, it seems that both Firefox and Thunderbird destabilize if my computer has been running more than 15 hours.  If I leave the computer on overnight, I will start seeing stability issues with Firefox first, and then Thunderbird will start acting strange after Firefox has crashed a couple of times.  If I don't re-boot soon after that, they both crash and then I have to re-boot to stabilize those programs.  Note that ONLY Firefox and Thunderbird crash or misbehave.  I'm not having issues with any other programs that I've noticed.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

**Does problem go away in *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled?
- XP http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx

Comment 15

[tnetcenter]

As I recall, no.  However, the computer in question iws currently in storage, so I have no way to verify that for an indefinite time period.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to tnetcenter from comment #13)
> (In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #12)
> > What does AVG have to say about this?
> 
> Since I'm no longer using vprot.exe and both Firefox and Thunderbird
> continue to crash occasionally, I don't think AVG is the ultimate source of
> the problem.  I do know that running vprot.exe makes the problem much worse
> and that I didn't have any problems until the more recent Firefox and
> Thunderbird updates were installed.  

will require new crash IDs to determine that signatures are the same as originally reported

Comment 17

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard