297736 - Firefox failed to open a browser window on launch, and changed process IDs 1-2 times per second

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Michael]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

This problem occured after I installed the latest set of Windows XP security
updates AND upgraded to the latest version of the IEView extension through the
extensions manager.  Upon launching firefox, the browser did not open.  1-2
firefox processes appeared in my task manager.  One of the processes changed its
PID (process ID) 1-2 times per second - behavior similar to a shell fork bomb on
Linux.  The process could not be killed from the task manager, and could only be
killed by running the command taskkill /f /im firefox.exe from the command line.
 Restarting the browser did not help.  Running the browser with a clean profile
from a new account did not help.  I was able to fix the problem by uninstalling
firefox, removing the Mozilla Firefox folder from Application Data, removing the
Firefox install folder, and reinstalling Firefox.  Performing a system restore
to remove the updates to Windows had no effect.  (I created a restore point
before installation of the security patches.)  Extensions that were installed
previously included linky, ieview, and adblock.  (Also, DOM inspector, I
believe.)  I was able to reinstall all three extensions with no problem after
reinstallation.  DOM inspector does not seem to have been included in 1.04. 
Installing IEView on firefox on another machine did not cause a problem.  It is
not clear that the ieview update caused the problem, however I noticed it at
that point since I restarted the browser.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Take working firefox 1.04 configured with linky, ieview, and adblock
2.  Update to latest ieview (or possibly hit malicious website?  or...?)
2a. Possibly install latest XP security fixes.
3.  Quit firefox
4.  Open task manager.  Display PID column.
5.  Launch firefox.

Actual Results:  
Firefox takes about 9200 K in memory.  The PID for firefox changes continuously.
 Firefox must be killed with taskkill /f /im firefox.exe.  Task manager kills
fail, because hte PID does not stay constant.

d:\Desktop>tasklist

Image Name                   PID Session Name     Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ====== ================ ======== ============
<other processes deleted>
firefox.exe                 1676 Console                 0      9,316 K
d:\Desktop>taskkill /f /im firefox.exe
SUCCESS: The process "firefox.exe" with PID 1520 has been terminated.

Note the different PID between the two commands executed back to back.

Expected Results:  
Browser launches happily.

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

This sounds like it's going to be hard to figure out the set of conditions that
caused this. There's no obvious exploit an attacker could glean from the bug so
I'm removing the confidential flag in the hopes that more eyes will help get to
the bottom of this. If we discover an exploitable problem lurking we can always
add the flag back (send mail to [e-mail])

Comment 2

[James G Pierce]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8)
Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8)
Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
> 
> This problem occured after I installed the latest set of Windows XP security
> updates AND upgraded to the latest version of the IEView extension through the
> extensions manager.  


I have prevented *ALL* new Microsoft updates and this bug is also affecting me.
The only things loaded was firefox 1.0.4 and I Downloaded the IEView extension
for Firefox. 

I am going to try to remove the extension w/o making a mess.

Comment 3

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

James are you still seeing this using Firefox 2.0.0.3?

Comment 4

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Closing as INCOMPLETE for lack of information. If you can reproduce this using Firefox 2.0.0.3 or later with a new profile and are willing to provide feedback and steps, please reopen.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

Comment 5

[Michael]

Well, I can't say what would happen with a new profile because it happens intermittently, and I do have to use my browser for real work, which means addingn in my bookmarks and plugins (so it would not be *new*), but it did happen to me again just last night using 2.0.0.3.  I have observed the behavior on multiple Windows machines.

What I observed was:
Firefox became unresponsive when I tried to click on links on a page.
I killed Firefox using the normal interface.
I tried to relaunch Firefox.
Nothing happened.
I checked the task manager.  Firefox was still running, and consuming about 18 MB of RAM.  After killing it, I was able to restart Firefox.

Comment 6

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Michael, does this happen in safe mode? If you run in safe mode, your bookmarks will be there, but not your extensions.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode

Alternatively, try disabling your extensions one-by-one and running with them off for a day or two. If you're feeling adventurous, try a new profile which only brings over the settings you need and see if that causes the problem. If not, slowly add things back and see which one creates the problem.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Migrating_settings_to_a_new_profile

Comment 7

[Michael]

I haven't seen the problem occur in quite a long time, so I can't reproduce it at this point.

Comment 8

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Michael, since you haven't seen this for a while, I'm going to close this bug as WORKSFORME. If you can reproduce again and have time to delve in and find out what might be causing it, feel free to reopen it.