Open Bug 1841293 Opened 1 year ago Updated 1 year ago

Firefox Private Browsing shortcut is left behind after upgrade and uninstall on Windows

Categories

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Installer
Version:
Firefox 114
Platform:
Desktop
Windows 10
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: thub, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [fidedi-ope])

Steps to reproduce:

Install an older release of Firefox (110.0 is what I had handy for testing) on a Windows system. Then, upgrade to Firefox 114.0.2. Finally, uninstall Firefox.

Actual results:

The Firefox Private Browsing shortcut is left behind in the common Start Menu Programs folder (%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs), even after a reboot.

Note that a fresh install of 114.0.2 uninstalls all shortcuts cleanly.

Expected results:

Both the Firefox and Firefox Private Browsing shortcuts should be removed on uninstall.

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Installer' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Component: Untriaged → Installer
  1. I was not able to reproduce the issue on Win10x64, I updated from 110.0 to 114.0.2 and uninstall it ( I did not found any FF icon on start menu/taskbar).
  2. A similar bug 1768592 was logged in the past but it was not something constant.
    I will mark this issue as new for developers input.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: Installer → Private Browsing
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Unspecified → Windows 10
Hardware: Unspecified → Desktop
Component: Private Browsing → Installer
Flags: needinfo?(sshatrughan)

Hmm. I do a lot of installing and uninstalling Firefox to try to reproduce issues. I noticed that I actually did have an extra shortcut lying around. But when I remove it and attempt to reproduce the problem, I cannot. So it seems likely that I've reproduced this at some point without noticing it. But it doesn't seem like I can reproduce it consistently. Which suggests that it's an intermittent problem, but I can't think of what could cause this to be intermittent.

I'll try to think about it further.

Severity: -- → S3
Flags: needinfo?(sshatrughan)
Whiteboard: [fidedi-ope]

The Windows installer for 117.0.1 alone (no need for an upgrade from a previous version) is creating Start Menu shortcuts that are left behind by a subsequent uninstall. Notably, the /StartMenuShortcut=true and /PrivateBrowsingShortcut=true arguments are used on the command-line for the install.

Maybe a little premature with that last comment. It looks like the uninstaller was failing with an error code of 0 after removing nothing. Hence, all shortcuts are still present and it doesn't seem related to this bug. If I can work out how to reproduce that with some consistency, I'll create a new bug for it.

You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.