258394 - Firefox cannot use the profile "default" because it is in use.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Morten Andersen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)
Build Identifier: 

My profile is not in use!

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Tools > Options
2. Go to advanced 
3. Under Software Update press Check Now
4. Close your browser
5. Start your browser

Actual Results:  
I am not able to start firefox with my profile anymore. I had to create a new 
profile.


Is it a file somewhere I can change to be able to start my profile again?

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Have you tried restarting your computer? Occasionally you'll get a phantom
firefox process which holds a lock improperly. You can also look for

C:\Documents and Settings\[YourUserName]\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[default.something]\parent.lock

And try to delete it (it's likely there is still some process holding a lock to
that file).

Comment 2

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

This bug is a symptom (i.e. dupe) of the problem where there is a Firefox
process running, but no window. Is there a bug number for this?

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Greg, are firefox processes with no windows a common problem? I haven't seen it,
but if it's common I need to investigate, because I was the one who rewrote
large bits of the startup code in the 0.9 release cycle.

Comment 4

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

It's become much less frequent recently (since about 0.9, I think), but it still
happens every so often; I've seen a good few threads on mozillaZine about it
(bang-up-to-date example: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=124457).

Anecdotally, it doesn't seem to happen when I use File > Exit, only when closing
each window by the Close button. Unfortunately, killing the process using the
Task Manager doesn't generate a Talkback report.

If there's no other bug for it, I suggest reopening this and changing the
summary to something like "Firefox process remains when all windows are closed".

Comment 5

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

I've now seen this when using File > Exit. There are a few other examples of
this in npm.browser
<news://news.mozilla.org:119/[e-mail]>.

Comment 6

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

See also bug 253950 comment 4

Comment 7

[Grey Nicholson (they/them)]

This just bit me using 1.0; the solution is bug 253950.