355863 - CNN videos corrupt ActiveX plugin intermittently

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, defect)

Description

[Gary Lowther]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

Approximately 1 in 3 times, when a video is viewed off of the CNN main page, if it is closed via the window manager (i.e. *not* by pressing the "Close Window" button, but rather by clicking on the "X" in the upper right corner of the frame), a popup is displayed. The popup states that an error has occurred in the ActiveX plug-in, and that Firefox should be restarted right away. Too true, since Firefox usually doesn't work well from that point on!

Unfortunately, I'm never able to simply restart Firefox. I can close it, but the process never actually shuts down. This prevents Firefox from being subsequently relaunched! I am forced to go into the Task Manager to manually kill the "firefox.exe" process before I can relaunch the browser. Alternatively, since this happens quite often, I wrote a little script that uses some of the PSTools utilities to find the PID for "firefox.exe" then issue a kill command.

I don't really know what my options are for gathering more debug information for you, unfortunately. But I'm happy to follow any instructions you provide. With any luck, someone else will be able to reproduce this problem! It happens for me on more than one system (all running Windows XP, though).

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. go to http://www.cnn.com
2. click on any video link
3. watch the video (at least some of it)
4. kill the window by clicking on the window manager's "X", in the upper right corner of the frame (do *not* use the "Close Window" button)
5. repeat steps 2-4 until you get the error popup about the ActiveX plug-in

Actual Results:  
A pop-up is displayed that complains that a problem has occurred in the ActiveX plug-in, and that Firefox needs to be restarted. Firefox behaves improperly if you choose to ignore that warning! However, it cannot be restarted easily, since the "firefox.exe" process never actually shuts down, and will not allow a new instance of the browser to be launched. The process has to be manually killed.

Expected Results:  
Well, first, it should have not failed! :-) That's too obvious, though! :-D

Second, I'm not at all versed on the Firefox architecture, but I wish that a failed plug-in would not require the whole browser to be restarted! :-( It would be better if a plug-in could be detached, then reloaded, within the active browser. Of course, the current design may not allow for that!

Third, when Firefox is closed, it should *really* close! A lingering, zombie process should never happen, especially if it's going to prevent new instances of the browser from being launched. It's too much to ask of normal users to have to resort to the Task Manager to forcibly kill the errant process.

I don't really have any. But I wish I did! I simply don't know how to debug Firefox errors! You probably have a document somewhere that told me what to do, but I missed it! If you'll provide a link, I'll see if I can get more data about this problem for you!

Comment 1

[Gary Lowther]

Attachment: This is a screenshot of the error popup from the ActiveX plugin.

Comment 2

[Gary Lowther]

Attachment: Screenshot of Task Manager; no Firefox app listed!

Comment 3

[Gary Lowther]

Attachment: Screenshot of Task Manager; still have a "firefox.exe" process!

Comment 4

[Gary Lowther]

I should add that, normally, I *do* watch the videos all the way to the end before I kill the window. I don't know if that makes any difference at all, but it's onw more data point.

Comment 5

[Aaron Racine]

WFM.  I watched 30 seconds of the "CNN Pipeline" free preview, and most of 4 other video clips linked to from the cnn.com front page.  There is a slight delay before the window closes, but there were no errors.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/2007051502 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Comment 6

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

Gary, are you still seeing this? Can you provide a site that might replicate it now? We don't actually support the ActiveX plugin so this bug is probably INVALID.

Comment 7

[Gary Lowther]

Somewhere along the way, this defect got resolved. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly which patch level took care of the problem, but this issue has been resolved for quite some time now.

Comment 8

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

Changing resolution to WORKSFORME since we don't know what code change, if any, fixed this.