1825984 - WidevineCDM crashes on Windows ARM with x86 Firefox installs

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video, defect, P3)

Description

[kimpire]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/111.0

Steps to reproduce:

On the combination of this computer and this browser, no streaming services - not Netflix, not Disney+, not Hulu, not Amazon - work properly. I keep receiving the message "The WidevineCdm plugin has crashed."

I have tested Edge on this laptop and it works; I have tested Firefox on my other laptop and it works.

Both laptops use the same version of Windows, so I suspect the problem is related to this laptop's ARM64 processor, as opposed to the x64 processor on my other laptop.

Reloading the page, restarting the plugin, uninstalling and reinstalling all of Firefox, Private Browsing, all of the troubleshooting I could think of - none of it works.

This has been the case for at least four months now, possibly even six.

Comment 1

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

kimpire, we shipped an update to Firefox in 111.0.1 that allowed us to roll out the native Windows ARM Widevine plugin. Once you update Firefox, and it gets a chance to check our Widevine update XML, it should pull the new plugin that resolves this. If it is still broken, then just delete the "gmp-widevinecdm" folder in your profile directory. For sure a clean profile will work right away with 111.0.1.

Comment 2

[kimpire]

Hi Andrew,

Unsuccessful, I'm afraid. My Firefox is already 111.0.1, and it had updated Widevine on March 30. I tried closing Firefox, deleting the folder, and reopening Firefox; I also tried launching a clean profile. Tested on three streaming services; neither worked.

Comment 3

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

I wonder if something went wrong with the rollout Could you go to your profile directory and zip up the contents of your gmp-widevinecdm folder so I can verify it is fetching the correct binary? Also attach your about:support just in case? Thanks!

Comment 4

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

And attach it to the bug obviously.

Comment 5

[kimpire]

Attachment: gmp-widevinecdm.zip

Attached.

Comment 6

[kimpire]

Attachment: about:support

Comment 7

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

You definitely have the 32-bit x86 plugins for Widevine and OpenH264, but you definitely should have not have the latter, even if something went wrong with our deployment for the former.

I suspect you have the 32-bit x86 version of Firefox installed and it is using the compatibility layer to run it on Windows 10. Can you try installing the Windows ARM64 version?
https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest-ssl&os=win64-aarch64&lang=en-CA

Comment 8

[Andrew Osmond [:aosmond] (he/him)]

I confirmed my suspicion looking at some of your crash reports:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/71086d7e-d517-424f-b18e-4d2dc0230404#tab-details

Comment 9

[kimpire]

Installing the ARM64 version worked instantly! Thanks!