Closed Bug 1386788 Opened 8 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Print to PDF broken in FF 54.0.1 64 bit, PC

Categories

(Core :: Printing: Output, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Printing: Output
Version:
54 Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: richardelli, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0 Build ID: 20170628075643 Steps to reproduce: 1. Order something online from Amazon, eBay, or other sites. 2. Print the order to PDF using Nuance PDF Creator (ver. 8.x) 3. When prompted, navigate to the folder where the file is to be saved. This is crucial for adding the new order to a set of previously existing orders that have been saved in one PDF file (Amazon, especially.) 4. Somewhere in the process of navigating to the proper folder, Firefox crashes. Actual results: Firefox crashes, with a prompt to send a report, and the option to restart or quit FF. Reports: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/8ea33873-7679-4ed6-979f-0c3f70170802 https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/fdc687cd-c0b6-4f49-9dec-9282b0170731 https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/671b43ea-4b7f-4d91-9b54-2c3f41170721 Expected results: The navigation should have succeeded in reaching the correct folder; I could then name the new file, or add it to an existing file. This is what has happened for years. The problem only began with this latest update.
These crash signature all show the crashes being in Nuance DLLs (pdfcore8_x64.dll). Have you reported anything to them?
Please assign this to Ryan Vander Meulen. He requested I file a new bug regarding this issue; I originally posted it as an edit to a previous, similar bug.
Assigning it to me isn't appropriate as I'm not an engineer who would be tasked with fixing any issue (I work in QA). But please note comment 1, the crash reports appear to be showing the crash in Nuance's DLLs and it would be good to know if anything has been reported to them.
(In reply to Richard Beeson from comment #2) > Please assign this to Ryan Vander Meulen. He requested I file a new bug > regarding this issue; I originally posted it as an edit to a previous, > similar bug. (In reply to Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM] from comment #1) > These crash signature all show the crashes being in Nuance DLLs > (pdfcore8_x64.dll). Have you reported anything to them? No, I haven't. It's an older version of PDF Create which is no longer given support, but it has always worked fine. I don't with to update it if I can avoid it. I don't see why I should have to update PDF Create because of a new feature, or bug, or whatever, in Firefox. There is no problem at all printing to PDF in Internet Explorer. Maybe PDF Create is doing the crashing, but something in Firefox is creating the crash.
"with to update" should read "wish to update."
I just used all the tricks I had used previously: cleared the cache, both from within Firefox and using 3rd part utilities; cleared history; cleaned the registry. This time, nothing worked. Until this is fixed, I will have to use Internet Explorer anytime I want to order something online and print the order. Truly bizarre. Maybe the problem lies in the 64-bit architecture of this version of FF; IE is still 32 bit.
The crash report says it's pdfcore8_x64.dll version 8.0.0.71. I have no idea which version of Nuance that corresponds to (and their support site is giving me 500 Internal Server Errors when I try to look there). But given that I see references to PDF Converter Professional 8.1 from back in 2012, I'm assuming it's pretty old. I also took a look for other crash reports involving this DLL and only found a total of 36 reports in the last 3 months - and all were on this one or an even older version. Yes, it's very possible that a change in Firefox code is breaking assumptions in Nuance software and how it hooks into Firefox. Unfortunately, that's a reality for any third-party software that hooks into another vendor's product. We see this after every new release of Firefox too with various antivirus/security products that break similarly until patched by their respective vendors. The ask you're making basically says that Firefox would need to be beholden to supporting other vendor's software indefinitely (even if they themselves no longer support it), which I don't think is a reasonable thing to ask. Note that any other browser is just as liable to break at any time for similar reasons. I would personally chalk up the fact that only Firefox has broken up to this point more to luck than anything else. I understand that you want to continue using the version of Nuance you have, but I'm not sure what can reasonably be done here on our end. If not upgrading this program is a must for you, I'd suggest considering using the ESR52 release which will continue to get security updates until mid-2018 as a possible alternative. Otherwise, given the low volume of the crash here and without evidence that this affects current versions of the Nuance software, I think this bug is wontfix. If it turns out to be reproducible with a current version too, feel free to reopen the bug and we can try to get engineering resources for further investigation. Thank you for the report and I'm sorry that this probably wasn't the answer you wanted to hear :(
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Ryan, I understand your points. But this is tremendously frustrating. I am not a corporation with a huge IT department. I am my own IT department for three computers running Windows 8.1. I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with program updates. It's come to the point where I hardly get any real work done. Every time I turn on a computer there are updates trying to install themselves. All I do is tend to updates and the chaos they create. Yesterday my main book layout program had an update, which required tweaking. Today it was Java, as usual. Oftentimes it's Firefox. Today also was a group of utilities I use for various functions. And I only did these updates on my main PC (which I built myself), not on the other computers, which don't run all the same software. The software industry is making itself unusable for average users. I am really getting fed up. Today I started doing my real work at noon, or so I thought, but didn't get to it until 5:30 because of all these software hassles. Now, regarding this specific issue with Firefox and Nuance PDF Create: I tested the issue on my laptop using the latest version of FF, and it had no problem with the printing scenario I laid out in the bug report. So I have to assume that some other program on the PC has knocked Nuance for a loop somehow. This obviously means even more digging and troubleshooting on my part. Not only that, but on the Nuance forums, I see that people are having problems printing to PDF using the latest version of it. So there's no guarantee that upgrading PDF Create would help in this instance. It is a highly difficult program to upgrade properly, because its functions are embedded so deeply in the system. For now, I have a kludge workaround that I can use: print to PDF directly to the desktop, then rename and move the file later. Firefox only crashes during the process of navigating folders. However, this workaround doesn't work when I'm trying to add pages to an existing file. There is a kludgier workaround for that: use a function within Nuance to combine multiple files into one PDF. But why should I have to go through all this? I think my ultimate workaround has to be using Internet Explorer for these functions, which means I lose the safety of Firefox. Either that, or I always have to switch to the laptop. The increasing episodes of bugs and conflicts between these over-complicated programs is going to sink the ship. I am 76 years old. I've been using computers since the days of CP/M in 1982; I was in charge of setting up the computer system for New York City Opera back in the day, and am not the usual ignorant consumer. I try to stay on top of the technology, but frankly, I'm fed up with wasting my time just trying to re-establish basic functionality on almost a daily basis. If I can't fix this, and don't like using IE, I'll have to start looking for a different browser. Maybe go back to Opera. Enough ranting. Thanks for your help and your time. I'll let you know if I find a solution.
Ryan, not being one to give up, I tried a few things: I ran FF in safe mode; I refreshed FF, thereby deleting all addons, etc.; I restored the original version of the Nuance DLL, just in case that had become corrupted; and none of it worked. I went into the Windows Event Viewer, and found there that the faulting module is Firefox itself. I am providing you with the relevant EVTX entries. In addition, when I took another look at the latest crash reports in the FF Troubleshooting module, I noticed that other threads also have highlighted entries. I don't know enough about the internal workings of Firefox to know what those mean, but it seems to me that they point to something else going on that is not easily explained. The most recent report from FF is as follows: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/fbb4aebd-1568-45ff-a8e8-5d9eb1170803#allthreads The Event Viewer log can be downloaded from my Cloud storage: https://rbeeson.exavault.com/share/view/iotj-3f463iad You do not need a password.
Ryan, after all my ranting, I owe you folks an apology. I finally tracked the problem down to a corrupted folder. I don't know if the security settings on the folder went haywire, or what. But I found that the PDF printer worked fine with other folders, even within the folder tree for orders. It was just the folder for this specific year that caused the crash. I created a new folder with a slightly different name, moved all the files to that, and then retested, and the PDFs printed fine. I then deleted to old folder. Go figure. Never had that happen on this computer, although I have on the laptop. Meantime, I'm looking into a newer version of a PDF create program, just to be safe. Thanks for the help. R
Very glad you figured it out!
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