301323 - Firefox suggests creating a new profile when firefox.exe is still running

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 253950

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[elfguy]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050719 Firefox/1.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050719 Firefox/1.0+

When using Firefox on Windows, and then having Firefox crash, the process
firefox.exe is often left running in processes. When the user restarts the
browser by clicking on the Firefox icon, the program sees the default profile is
in use and shows the profile manager, suggesting to the user that he should
create a new profile. This leads tons of users to create a new profile by
mistake, and then end up with their settings, bookmarks, etc gone.

The default behaviour when the default profile is in use should not to suggest a
new profile be created. Firefox should be able to check if a process is still
running, and if so present a dialog saying something like "A Firefox process is
still running, use the Task Manager to kill it or restart your system", OR it
should show the profile manager with a warning saying that if the user creates a
new profile, all his settings and bookmarks will not be accessible.

Solving the issue of having a new profile be created by mistake would solve over
half the threads on support forums starting with "all my bookmarks are gone!".



Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Firefox on Windows
2. Find a way to crash Firefox
3. Start Firefox again, watch the profile manager appear

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 253950 ***