232060 - Browser doesn't launch under Windows95 when DCOM95 is not installed

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 212363

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Yukinoroh[:Yukinoroh]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.6/

The browser won't launch at all with ver 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 . I just see Version
1.3 is fine.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run Mozilla

Actual Results:  
I see the orange window for a second, then nothing - program has [been] shut
down with no error window.

Expected Results:  
Launch.

See next message for the attachment.

Comment 1

[Yukinoroh[:Yukinoroh]]

Attachment: Filemon log (zipped)

Comment 2

[Yukinoroh[:Yukinoroh]]

I just sent in a Filemon log.
The problem seems to be at line 9837 - There is a problem with Msvcrt20.dll, so
Kernell32 takes over and shuts the program down.

Comment 3

[Andreas Kunz]

Yukinoroh Kawara, do you have any extensions or third-party themes installed?
Please try uninstalling them because they might be incompatible to newer Mozilla
versions.
Also please try starting Mozilla with a new, clean profile. Thanks.

Comment 4

[Yukinoroh[:Yukinoroh]]

Hm... Well, I was on a fresh installation of Windows, and Mozilla 1.6 wasn't
launching after installation, so I tried installing 1.5, then 1.4, and it
started working with 1.3. I don't have extensions or third party themes - just
the browser alone, without even the flash plugin yet... And about the profile,
at first try for 1.6 (without a single trace of Mozilla on my computer), I
didn't get to the screen where they ask me if I would like to convert my
Netscape 4.5 profile, so I don't think the problem is there...

What else could I try to help identifying the source of the problem ?

Comment 5

[Alexander Opitz]

Try it without an installed NS4.5 (maybe mozilla tries to start some plugins
from there before the convert dialog appears)

For me it works on Win95 (Last BuildID: 2004020108).

Comment 6

[Alexander Opitz]

Hmmm, I can't start a fresh 1.6 installation on a fresh win95 install ... last
available nightly (2004020311) works.

Comment 7

[Alexander Opitz]

Get Mozilla 1.6 running on an other Win95 machine on a fresh win95 install ...
will investigate what is the difference between the 2 PC's ... but this will
take a while.

Comment 8

[Yukinoroh[:Yukinoroh]]

I found the problem!

Microsoft's DCOM95 needs to be installed in order for Mozilla to launch. It rang
a bell to me when I tried to install Open Office and the installer stopped at
the beginning, telling me that the software could be quite unstable without DCOM
installed. So I uninstalled my current version of Mozilla, installed 1.6, didn't
work, uninstalled 1.6, installed DCOM95, rebooted, installed 1.6, and guess
what, I'm using it right now :)

There shall be a notice on the download page about this, or else an error
message like OpenOffice did...

I've changed the summary; if it's not okay please change it back ^^, (It was
"Browser won't launch".)

Comment 9

[Andreas Kunz]

opi, can you confirm that DCOM95 is the difference and this bug is valid in that
sense?

Adding relnote keyword because this might be worthwhile to note. Remove if it is
not appropriate.

Comment 10

[Alexander Opitz]

I can't confirm this yet and I think DCOM95 isn't the problem cause all my win95
pc's (18) are made on the same day with the same harddrive (with a win95
installation, only hardware specific changes are saved back) ... this is then
saved to a FileServer as an image. Every morning the pc's boot over network a
linux system, this format the local hard drive and copys the diskimage back ...
So I've every day a clean win95 installation.

It may be, that one of our admins had replaced the image of the one computer
with a newer/changed image, but I do not think it is DCOM95.

Maybe someone can tell me how I find out if DCOM95 is installed or not, then I
can crawl through all images for the file(s).

And it makes no sense that 1.6 needs DCOM95 and pre1.6 and post1.6 don't need it.

Comment 11

[Alexander Opitz]

At6 the moment I run with 1.6 in a new bug on win95

If QuickLaunch is enabled and you restart Win95 ... QuickLaunch will start but:

Sometimes the keyboard do not work any more.

But also you can't start a Mozilla session :-/ and if you kill the running
mozilla (QuickLaunch) your profile will be corrupted (All settings are missed
after this).

But else mozilla 1.6 works ... I've a file called Dcom2w98.dll on this win95
(4.0.950 B) ... is this the DCOM95? At the moment I've no access to the win95
computer who failed last time :-/

Comment 12

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

I don't know the details here, but please adjust the severity - it is most
likely 'major'.

Comment 13

[Andreas Kunz]

Attachment: diff -u of "dir" output in C:\Windows\System before/after DCOM95 install

I currently have to use an old Win95 Computer where Mozilla also didn't start.
Being aware of this bug, I installed DCOM95 and piped the output of "dir" in
the Windows\System folder into a file.
The attachment is the diff of those files, showing what files got changed/added
when installing DCOM95.

Opi: dcom2w98.dll is amongs the new files.

The installation also created a dcom95\oldole directory for backing up the old
files.

Firefox did not start before (error message), it does now.
Seamonkey came to the splash screen before, but silently crashed/exited shortly
after. Unfortunately it still does, but this might of course have a different
reason. Note: this is a 120 MHz Pentium with 32 MB RAM etc., so the issue could
be a shortage of other resources...

Comment 14

[Andreas Kunz]

Correction to my last comment:
This was trying to use a zip build. Using the Mozilla 1.6 installer, Moz now 
does run. Unfortunately this does not say much because I don't know if the 
installer had worked on pre-DCOM95 Win95...

Comment 15

[Andreas Kunz]

Maybe related to bug 197692 and bug 212363?
oleaut32.dll is amongst the files replaced...

Opi: maybe you can compare the version/dat/size of this file between the various
computers where this is seen/not seen.
Of course all you others can also do so.

Comment 16

[OstGote!]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Microsoft's DCOM95 needs to be installed in order for Mozilla to launch. It rang

(In reply to comment #15)
> Maybe related to bug 197692 and bug 212363?
> oleaut32.dll is amongst the files replaced...

Yes to both, see http://www.microsoft.com/com/dcom/dcom95/relnotes.asp#files.
The DCOM95 update installs a current version of the oleaut32.dll, which causes
such an error like in the two other bugs. Plain Win95 and Win98 "Gold"
installations have an outdated version of this file.

IMO this bug could be resolved as dupe of bug 197692.

Comment 17

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

This bug still left unconfirmed......

I'd like to help.  I have VMWare and could install all three versions of Win95
from scratch.  Just tell me what steps to follow and what to check (esp. how to
check if DCOM95 is installed).

Comment 18

[Benjamin Smedberg]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 212363 ***