172826 - mozilla crashes when pressing Edit|preferences

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 169777

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Lishai Eitan]

with a certain user, after a period of normal use (not manualy editing any file
in ~/.mozilla, and no crashes), mozilla started to crash every time i pressed on
edit|preferences.

The problem was solved by removing the file ~/.mozilla/default/-------/XUL.mfasl
after which the browser returned to work normally (and loaded faster, if that
matters any)
this file was not edited. i cannot recall any special chain of events that
caused this.
however, i kept a copy of the faulty file, i just don't see how to put it here...

My system:
Mandrake 9.0
Mozilla 1.1 (comes with mandrake)
320 MB RAM
AMD 900Mhz
kernel 2.4.19-16mdk

Comment 1

[Andrew Schultz]

*** Bug 172825 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Andrew Schultz]

if you are using the Mozilla that came with Mandrake, you need to try out a
.mozilla.org build (like a recent trunk build).  Mozilla can't fix Mandrake's bugs

Comment 3

[Copperfield]

Strangely enough, this exact same thing happened just tonight in Phoenix 0.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20021014 Phoenix/0.3

Choosing Tools|Preferences would lock Phoenix up cold.
It affected one profile, and (seemingly) not the other two, and deleting the
xul.mfl file for the affected profile fixed the problem, just as the reporter said.

Comment 4

[Adam Macznik]

I've seen this crash too with Mozilla 1.2a 2002091016 on RedHat 7.1.

I've pressed Edit-> Prefs and Mozilla froze for several minutes, and after I
patiently waited, I got a crash with Talkback appearing. Sorry, haven't sent the
data then.
But I saw it again while opening the sidebar. Again, Mozilla froze and after
some 4 minutes, crashed - so these crashes may be related. This time I've sent
TB12656864G.

In both cases, deleting XUL.mfasl cured the problem.

Haven't tested newer builds, but note that this occurs only after some long use
(although, once it happens, it's 100% reproducible).

Also, bug 173359 seems to be the same for Mozilla on Win98.
And bug 172952 for Phoenix on WinXP (this one is RESOLVED WORKSFORME at this
moment).

Comment 5

[Krister Nielsen]

This has happened to me as well with Moz1.2beta (build2002101612), Win98.

Every time I select Edit->Preferences, Mozilla crashes.

I haven't made any changes to any of the Mozilla files, nor installed any
components.

The bug first occured when I was navigating the Preferences menu (which I cannot
even get to now). I was using the keyboard and upon selecting the last item
("Offline and Disk Space", or something to that effect - cannot check, since I
cannot enter the menu again) Mozilla froze.

-Krister

Comment 6

[Daniel Wang]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 169777 ***

Comment 7

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

v dup