1768592 - Firefox Private Browsing icon is not removed from taskbar after uninstalling the browser (on certain test machines)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Ciprian Georgiu, Desktop QA]

Affected versions

• Beta 101.0b4

Affected platforms

• Windows 11 x64
• Windows 10 x64
• Windows 8.1 x64

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Firefox.
2. Navigate to "about:config" and set:

• browser.privacySegmentation.enabled = true
• ShellService.pinToTaskbar = true
  (These prefs create the PBM shortcut in taskbar)

3. Go to control panel and uninstall Firefox.

Expected result

• Private browsing icon is deleted from taskbar.

Actual result

• Although Firefox is uninstalled, the Private browsing icon is still displayed in taskbar.

Regression range

• Not a regression.

Additional notes

• It seems that the issue is reproducible only on certain machines with Win 11 and Win 10.
• I've tried to delete everything related to Firefox (installs, profiles, cache etc.), but the issues still reproduces on those machines. Oddly enough, I can reproduce it on 101.0b1 as well, where it did not reproduce before.
• I was not able to reproduce the bug on Win 7.

Comment 1

[Ciprian Georgiu, Desktop QA]

Attachment: pbm-issue.png

Attaching a screenshot with the message displayed after clicking on the Firefox Browsing icon from taskbar.

Comment 2

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Huh, this is very strange - especially that it's intermittent.

Do you have any shortcut logs (.ini files) in %PROGRAMDATA%\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38?

Comment 3

[Ciprian Georgiu, Desktop QA]

(In reply to [e-mail] (:bhearsum) from comment #2)

Huh, this is very strange - especially that it's intermittent.

Do you have any shortcut logs (.ini files) in %PROGRAMDATA%\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38?

I don't have. The folder contains only an uninstall ping (.json), an update lock file and an update folder which is empty. I've uploaded that folder here, if you want to take a look.

Comment 4

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

(In reply to Ciprian Georgiu [:ciprian_georgiu], Release Desktop QA from comment #3)

(In reply to [e-mail] (:bhearsum) from comment #2)

Huh, this is very strange - especially that it's intermittent.

Do you have any shortcut logs (.ini files) in %PROGRAMDATA%\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38?

I don't have. The folder contains only an uninstall ping (.json), an update lock file and an update folder which is empty. I've uploaded that folder here, if you want to take a look.

OK, so I'm not surprised they're not getting removed if you don't have any shortcut logs.

Another thing I'd like to double check...in your original comment you said you set this pref:

ShellService.pinToTaskbar = true

Did you mean you ran ShellService.pinToTaskbar(true) in the Browser Console? (This is not a pref that you can set - it's code that you should be executing.) A screen recording reproducing the issue may be helpful here.

Comment 5

[Ciprian Georgiu, Desktop QA]

Attachment: pbm icon not removed.gif

(In reply to [e-mail] (:bhearsum) from comment #4)

Did you mean you ran ShellService.pinToTaskbar(true) in the Browser Console? (This is not a pref that you can set - it's code that you should be executing.) A screen recording reproducing the issue may be helpful here.

Yes, that's what I meant. It was a mistake I've made when I filed the bug. Please see the attached screencast.

Comment 6

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Hm, so this suggests that the Private Browsing shortcut already existed when you pinned to Taskbar. A couple more questions:

• Is there any chance that you previously pinned Private Browsing mode to the Taskbar on this machine? If so, would it have been with an early development version of this feature?
• Can you reproduce on any clean machines?
• Can you determine where the shortcut pinned to the taskbar actually is? I'd suggest searching in %appdata% for any files matching Private. If you find any matching lnk files, please attach them to this bug.

Comment 7

[Giorgia Nichita, Release Desktop QA]

Regarding your questions:

• Yes, the Private Browsing mode was pinned to the taskbar various times including earlier versions.

• No, we cannot reproduce the issue on clean machines.

• We were able to reproduce this issue again on Win 10 and Win 11, but not on Win 8.1. Please find attached to this bug the matching lnk files. After we cleaned the %appdata% folder we could not reproduce the bug anymore.

Comment 8

[Giorgia Nichita, Release Desktop QA]

Attachment: lnk files.zip

Comment 9

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Thanks for all of the information!

My best guess of what's happened here is that the machines that hit this were previously used to test a version of this work that did not yet implement the shortcuts log updates required for uninstalls to work correctly (this was the last thing I implemented, so it's not implausible). Because they already had shortcuts available, new ones were not created (and thus the shortcuts log was not updated) when you pinned to taskbar.

Given this, I'm going to close as INVALID unless there's a way to hit this on a more clean or recent environment.