291784 - Main window is corrupted (pages, tabs, new windows, dialogs, menus all fail to display)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ed]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3 StumbleUpon/1.9994

Basically, nearly everything fails to display properly at startup. The program 
menu (File, Edit, View...) displays, along with the green and white check for 
updates button, the major shortcut buttons (back, forward, and so on), the 
address bar, the bookmarks toolbar (without showing any of the bookmarks that 
should be there) and the search box, but that's it.

Symptoms:
- Pages display as white, not highlightable or in any way viewable as a web 
page.
- I can browse only by clicking on and typing in the search box (nothing is 
visible in the search box while typing, or in the page area after the new page 
loads)
- Menus do not work - nothing at all happens when clicking on them.
- View source (accessed via Ctrl+U) does work.
- Other shortcuts (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+H, Ctrl+N, Ctrl+T, F1, etc.) do nothing visible
- Clicking on buttons like Refresh or Home has no effect.
- Clicking the check for updates button does cause the program to check for 
updates, but no other problems resolve.
- Search while you type produces either no sound or the "not found" "thumping" 
sound, accordingly, but without any visible changes.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Firefox via shortcut, command line, or any other means.

Actual Results:  
See Details.

Expected Results:  
Loaded and displayed a web page, as well as properly working menus and dialogs.

I have been using Firefox as my primary browser for months. This has happened 
twice previously on my machine and once on another. In the previous 
instances, "searching" by clicking on the search box and typing something (+ 
Enter), closing Firefox, and restarting resolved the problem. Once, it would 
alternate between loading normally and loading with the above symptoms; I had 
to uninstall and reinstall any extensions to make this alternation stop.

The first warning sign in every case has been a failure in Firefox to create 
new windows for browsing. While new tabs worked properly, Ctrl+N or any other 
attempt to open a new window produces only the hourglass cursor for a couple 
of seconds, then nothing. In every instance, the next time Firefox was 
restarted, the above symptoms have appeared.

I should note that, this time, the tricks above are not working. Firefox is 
not usable, at this time.

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Sounds like an extension problem.
What happens if you start firefox in safemode?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode_%28Firefox%29
I suspect uninstalling one of your extensions will solve this problem.

Comment 2

[Ed]

Safe mode did resolve it, this time. This has happened with several different 
combinations of extensions, however, on different machines (including, I 
believe, with no extensions, at all, in one case).

In any case, there needs to be (a) more protection against an extension 
causing problems so severe and (b) some sort of on/off switch for extensions, 
short of uninstalling.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

-> invalid (caused by extensions)

Firefox can't protect itself for extensions.....