1906961 - A new private window with two tabs pops up every time I unlock my Windows machine

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1892995

(Core :: IPC, defect)

Description

[Luke Georgalas]

Attachment: Screenshot 2024-07-09 134854.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:129.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/129.0

Steps to reproduce:

Launched Firefox developer edition. Locked my Windows PC. Unlocked it.

Actual results:

A private browsing window popped up with two tabs that each ask me to restart to keep using firefox developer edition

Expected results:

No private window should have appeared.

Comment 1

[Luke Georgalas]

My Firefox Developer Edition is up to date. I've already tried restarting in troubleshooting mode. I've refreshed Firefox.

When Firefox is not running when I lock and unlock my computer, this problem does not appear.

Comment 2

[Luke Georgalas]

Rebooting my PC didn't resolve the problem.

Comment 3

[Luke Georgalas]

I get the same behavior when I unplug and plug my dock, without a lock/unlock.

Comment 4

[Luke Georgalas]

Switching in and out of airplane mode triggers this too.

Comment 5

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

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

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:mak, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 7

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Could you please get a txt log from the about:support page and attach it to this report?
Did you use Private Browsing in the session before locking the computer?

I'm tentatively moving to the Update component, but I'm not sure that is right, as the symptoms are quite particular.
It may have to move to General until someone can pinpoint the problem to a specific component.
Though we need the additional information to do that.

Comment 8

[Nipun Shukla]

This seems quite unique compared to some of the other restart required issues. Robin, would you know anything about what's going on here?

Comment 9

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

I'll need some more information to be able to say what's going on here. Here are the steps to collect it.

1. Navigate the browser to about:config and set app.update.log to true.
2. Wait for or cause this problem to reoccur.
3. Open the Browser Console either with the hotkey Control+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on macOS), or via Hamburger Menu->More Tools->Browser Console.
4. In the Filter textbox at the top, enter AUS: to filter out everything except the update messages.
5. Copy the messages out of the Browser Console and attach them to this bug.
6. Navigate to about:support and locate the row labelled "Build ID". Let me know what this value is.
7. Open the Installation Directory (if you aren't sure where that is, the about:support page has an "Application Binary" row that can give you this information)
8. Locate and open the file called application.ini.
9. Find the section called [App]. Within that section, find the line that starts with BuildID=. Let me know what value this has.

I additionally need to know, is this computer managed? For example, does a company, school, or IT department/company control this computer in any way?

Comment 10

[Hiram Garcia]

Did what Robin requested. Reproduced the issue by locking my windows laptop and after login a second windows appeared as described by Luke. Here are the filtered logs:
AUS:SVC Logging current UpdateService status:
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canUsuallyCheckForUpdates - able to check for updates
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canCheckForUpdates - able to check for updates
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - testing write access C:\ProgramData\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38\updates\308046B0AF4A39CB\update.test
AUS:SVC isServiceInstalled - returning true
AUS:SVC shouldUseService - returning true
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - bypass the write checks because the Windows Maintenance Service can be used
AUS:SVC isServiceInstalled - returning true
AUS:SVC shouldUseService - returning true
AUS:SVC getCanStageUpdates - able to stage updates using the service
AUS:SVC Elevation required: false
AUS:SVC Other instance of the application currently running: false
AUS:SVC Downloading: false
AUS:SVC End of UpdateService status
AUS:SVC Logging current UpdateService status:
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canUsuallyCheckForUpdates - able to check for updates
AUS:SVC UpdateService.canCheckForUpdates - able to check for updates
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - testing write access C:\ProgramData\Mozilla-1de4eec8-1241-4177-a864-e594e8d1fb38\updates\308046B0AF4A39CB\update.test
AUS:SVC isServiceInstalled - returning true
AUS:SVC shouldUseService - returning true
AUS:SVC getCanApplyUpdates - bypass the write checks because the Windows Maintenance Service can be used
AUS:SVC isServiceInstalled - returning true
AUS:SVC shouldUseService - returning true
AUS:SVC getCanStageUpdates - able to stage updates using the service
AUS:SVC Elevation required: false
AUS:SVC Other instance of the application currently running: false
AUS:SVC Downloading: false
AUS:SVC End of UpdateService status

Build ID 20240725162350 from about:support

Build ID from application.ini
[App]
Vendor=Mozilla
Name=Firefox
RemotingName=firefox
Version=128.0.3
BuildID=20240725162350

This laptop is a corporate laptop managed by the companies IT dept.

Hope this helps. Thanks!

Comment 11

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

Thank you for the information!

Build ID 20240725162350 from about:support
Build ID from application.ini
BuildID=20240725162350

Since these match, the version of Firefox that is running is the same version that is on the disk. This suggests that Firefox is incorrectly showing the message indicating that Firefox has been updated. The code that controls this message being shown is owned by a different team, so I will move this to their component and CC someone that I think probably knows more about what might be going on here.

(In reply to Hiram Garcia from comment #10)

This laptop is a corporate laptop managed by the companies IT dept.

This does share some marked similarities to Bug 1892995, which is apparently caused by a piece of software called Proofpoint. Could you find out if your company uses this software? It's possible that this is a duplicate of that bug, though I am still a bit confused because this bug does seem to differ slightly in presentation (private browsing windows being opened) and in triggers (see Comment 3 and Comment 4).

Comment 12

[Hiram Garcia]

I do see a "proofpoint agent" installed on my system.

Comment 13

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to Hiram Garcia from comment #12)

I do see a "proofpoint agent" installed on my system.

Windows, Linux or macOS ?

Comment 14

[Luke Georgalas]

Hiram and I are co-workers experiencing the same issue. We have proofpoint installed by group policy. (Windows)

Now that you mention it, it did start right around when proofpoint was installed on my PC. I remember when proofpoint got installed because my PC had trouble installing it and our IT help desk walked me through it.

Comment 15

[Nika Layzell [:nika] (ni? for response)]

Duping to bug 1892995, as this is likely connected to the same proofpoint issue.