Open Bug 1852923 Opened 2 years ago Updated 1 day ago

Firefox single Window (but all tabs) freeze after inactivity

Categories

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect, P3)

Product:
Core
Component:
Widget: Win32
Version:
Firefox 118
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: a.cariage, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0

Steps to reproduce:

Steps are unclear, but here is all the context I can give :

  • Always happened to me when away from keyboard, never happened while using Firefox
  • Usually I find one window of Firefox frozen when coming back overnight and having let the computer on at work

Actual results:

  • It happens to only one WINDOW of Firefox. If I have multiple windows open, all the tabs in this windows will be frozen. It's the actual window that is affected.

  • Other windows work perfectly as far as I can tell.

  • In the affected window, nothing can be clicked, hovers create 0 reactions, nowhere in the whole window, including top-right system buttons (minimize, maximize, close).

  • I thus can't close the window and need to close through the taskbar icon. I can't close only this window and have to close Firefox as a whole.

  • Re-oppening Firefox after such a crash has oddities too :
    -- It doesn't offer to re-open closed tabs, windows nor the last session.
    -- It has forgotten the pinned tabs.
    -- It will always open one single Firefox window with the default Home page.
    -- History is unaffected

  • It happens very randomly :
    -- Happened to me litterally dozens of time since before Firefox 100, no updates affected this.
    -- But my work computer has to stay on most of the time, so 20-30 times (approximately) is not that much for a bug that's been happening for years (I'd say about 2 years+).
    -- Happens on other computers too (100% confirmed), but I rarely let other computers on for long, so the bug only happened a few times at home.
    -- Happened with a variety of tabs open, I highly doubt one particular website is the cultprit.
    -- MAYBE one consistent variable is having pinned tabs. Not a 100% sure about this, but I always have pinned tabs at work and it's always my main window (the one with pinned tabs) that crashes.

Expected results:

No freeze or crash.

  • Alternatively, the freeze shouldn't impair recovering the last session, which would be a "decent" workaround for this bug because restoring the last session is fast and efficient.

Let me know of any method for gathering and reporting more information about the crash.

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Win32' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Component: Untriaged → Widget: Win32
Product: Firefox → Core

(In reply to a.cariage from comment #0)

  • Re-oppening Firefox after such a crash has oddities too :
    -- It doesn't offer to re-open closed tabs, windows nor the last session.

[...] Alternatively, the freeze shouldn't impair recovering the last session, which would be a "decent" workaround for this bug because restoring the last session is fast and efficient.

Session Restore should still continue to function in this case! Two possibilities come to mind:

  1. In about:preferences, is the checkbox labeled "Open previous windows and tabs" checked? If not, Session Restore may not be activating because Firefox hasn't actually crashed (just hung); you've successfully closed it despite the hang, and then it's simply obeying that preference. (In this case I would expect no crash reports in about:crashes, below.)
  2. Since the hang only occurs while the system is idle, an attempt to collect and save Session Restore data may be what's triggering the bug.

Usually I find one window of Firefox frozen when coming back overnight and having let the computer on at work

When you come back to your computer, do you have to restart it from a sleep- or hibernation-state?

(In reply to a.cariage from comment #1)

Let me know of any method for gathering and reporting more information about the crash.

When Firefox crashes, it should offer to send a crash report. (Does it do so here?) If you go to about:crashes, you should see a list of recent crash reports, with identifiers like "bp-c3a998fc-26a4-469f-bdf3-e24fd0221114". Are there any crash reports there that seem to line up with times when you had to restart Firefox? If so, can you post their IDs here?

If there aren't any appropriate crash reports, then the next time it hangs, you can create a dump file as follows:

  • Open about:processes from a functioning window.
    • The top entry will be named simply "Firefox", followed by a number in parentheses. Make a note of this number.
  • Open the Task Manager.
    • If necessary, click 'More Details' in the bottom left.
    • Ensure the PID field is visible. (Right-click the column headers; select PID from the dropdown if it's not checked.)
    • Sort by process name, then by PID.
    • Open the list of Firefox processes (if it's not already) by clicking the chevron to the left of the Firefox entry.
    • Find the entry with the PID noted earlier. Right-click it and select "Create dump file".

If you do this, do not post the dump file here; e-mail it to me for analysis. (My Bugzilla username, at mozilla dot com.)

Separately: can you post a copy of your about:support data to this bug? ('Copy raw data to clipboard'; paste into Notepad and save; attach here using the 'Attach New File' button, above. This will be public, so you may want to check it for private data before posting.)

Flags: needinfo?(a.cariage)

Session Restore should still continue to function in this case!
Session Restore doesn't work.
The option isn't checked in Preferences, but I can still manually trigger the Session Restore at any time with the main sandwitch menu.
That's the issue after this crash : it will have completely forgotten about the previous session, the sandwitch menu doesn't have neither:

  1. Restore last session,
  2. Recently closed tabs, nor
  3. Recently closed windows.
    Nothing.

When you come back to your computer, do you have to restart it from a sleep- or hibernation-state?
No. The screen is locked though.

If you go to about:crashes [...]
Nope, the crash doesn't appear there. Last recorded crash is from July, but I did the report the day my last crash happened.
Now, don't forget it's not an actual Firefox crash. It's one window that completely hangs and "forces me" to close all of Firefox. But I could forget about this frozen windows and continue using another window I already had open. Others will continue to work. I never tested that thougoughly though, because when it happens I always try to get rid of the frozen window (---> close all windows and restart Firefox).

I'll try the about:processes next time the hang happens !

Flags: needinfo?(a.cariage)

Completely screwed the markdown sorry.

Severity: -- → S3
Priority: -- → P3

Reporter has sent a dump file. Setting a ni? for myself as a reminder.

Flags: needinfo?(rkraesig)

I've only been able to do a very cursory analysis so far, but two questions:

  • Do you use the same cloud service at work and home? If so, if you block your cloud service's DLL from being injected into Firefox (or just disable it, if it's one of the more polite sorts), does the crash still occur? (I don't know what that DLL actually does for you once it's in Firefox, so you might reasonably be unwilling to run this test.)

  • Inspired by a vaguely similar bug: once the Firefox window is broken, can you still move it around by dragging the titlebar? If not, does clicking on it produce a beep (well, chime) and cause the window to flicker twice, or is it just completely dead? (Alternatively, if you have Spy++ installed, does the window have the WS_DISABLED style?)

Flags: needinfo?(a.cariage)

I made a video showing the bug as it happened again.

Please read along before watching because the video is NOT self-explanatory :

Indeed, it didn't record the mouse cursor, and is pretty fast, and thus makes things harder to understand.

Here's what happens in the video :
1. I show one Firefox window that hasn't crashed, and I open tabs, and settings tabs, to show it works.
2. Then I switch to the one window that has "crashed". But as you'll see, the website inside the only tab that is accessible/visible is still running (it's a live camera feed). In the video nothing will move but in facts I'm clicking everywhere (remember the mouse cursor was not recorded). I'm clicking on new tab, close tab, bookmarks, minimize, maximize, close, sandwitch menu, and using keyboard shortcuts too... I'm trying everything. Notice the time passing in the video feed. The tab content is not crashed, only the UI as far as I can tell.
3. Then I go back to the first window just to show the other windows really are not affected, even after trying to "mess things up".

LINK TO THE VIDEO (link to a Nextcloud server, you can check it's downloading a video file) :
https://ncd.sight-sound.ch/index.php/s/pqZmCzEfnBxMc6M

Again, I would not mind if that crash didn't completely wipe Firefox's memory. But right now, I know I'll have to force-close it, and it will have forgotten my last session, it has every single time I've had this bug (for years now). So my 25-ish tabs will all be "lost". That's really the problematic thing, way more than the crash itself.

Let me know if more info is needed.

Flags: needinfo?(a.cariage)

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(rkraesig)
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.