363045 - Starting a download hangs firefox for up to 2 minutes.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 161783

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect)

Description

[Håvar Nielsen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

When ever I start downloading a file, no matter how small, on my windows computer running firefox 2.0, firefox hangs for up to several minutes.

Firefox becomes totally unresponsive.

This is starting to bug me a lot, so I wanted to report this problem. This problem is none-existent using Opera, so there is no problem with my network settings. It has to be Firefox.

It doesn't matter what file I download. Any download hangs firefox. Even rightclicking an image and choosing save as...

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Firefox
2. Find a file you want to download
3. Try to download it

I don't know if I have any special setups. I might have copied my old firefox 1.5 settings from a backup over the firefox 2.0 settings the last time I reinstalled windows.
Actual Results:  
Firefox hangs for minutes when I try to download any file.

Expected Results:  
Not hang.

Using standard theme, but google browser sync plugin.

about:buildconfig

Build platform
target
i586-pc-msvc

Build tools
Compiler 	Version 	Compiler flags
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TC -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)
$(CYGWIN_WRAPPER) cl 	12.00.8804 	-TP -nologo -W3 -Gy -Fd$(PDBFILE)

Configure arguments
--enable-application=browser --enable-update-channel=release --enable-official-branding --enable-optimize --disable-debug --disable-tests --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-svg --enable-canvas --enable-update-packaging

Comment 1

[Nir]

duplicate of Bug - 159107 ?

Comment 2

[Håvar Nielsen]

(In reply to comment #1)
> duplicate of Bug - 159107 ?
> 

I don't think it is the same problem as the initiator of bug 159107 had, but this commentor #63 from that bug seems to have the same problem:

"I think the problem is not the time in seconds that Firefox takes to download
an image/file/page. The major problem is that Firefox becomes unresponsive at
the moment when the download is initiated. This has been my experience with
Firefox on Windows on several computers. I think it's a pretty important
problem to look into especially from user/usability view."

I have to agree with him on this issue. If I want to download several consecutive files, I would rather use Opera on my Windows computer at this time. I don't have this problem on my Ubuntu computer.

Anyhow, Firefox becomes unresponsive for a lot longer than some seconds, we're really talking minutes. And I think this is a severe issue, which needs immediate attention.

Comment 3

[Nir]

(In reply to comment #2)
Håvar, can you reproduce this problem in a new profile ?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager#Windows

Comment 4

[Håvar Nielsen]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> Håvar, can you reproduce this problem in a new profile ?
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager#Windows
> 
No, I can't. This accually solved the problem. Even when I installed google browser sync again and synced the new profile and set up Firefox exactly like the old profile, there are no problems downloading any files. The problems may reappear later, though.

Maybe my profile was corrupt from being overwritten by an old 1.5 profile? - I think that may have happened when I restored the My Documents and Application Data folders from a backup the last time I reinstalled Windows, some weeks ago.

Anyhow, thanks for helping.

Comment 5

[Nir]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Maybe my profile was corrupt from being overwritten by an old 1.5 profile? 
This problem (crash or hang during download)  use to occur  because of corrupted 'downloads.rdf' file within your FF profile folder (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile#Firefox).
There are some bug reported already opened on this problem : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Downloads.rdf#Related_bugs

if you find any of these bug reports has close relation to your problem then mark your bug as dup of that :)

Comment 6

[Håvar Nielsen]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > Maybe my profile was corrupt from being overwritten by an old 1.5 profile? 
> This problem (crash or hang during download)  use to occur  because of
> corrupted 'downloads.rdf' file within your FF profile folder
> (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile#Firefox).
> There are some bug reported already opened on this problem :
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Downloads.rdf#Related_bugs
> 
> if you find any of these bug reports has close relation to your problem then
> mark your bug as dup of that :)
> 
It doesn't seem to be the same behavior as described in any of those other bugs. Maybe the same as some of the comments in bug 159107 - and maybe the same cause. But it's not exactly the same behavior as the original bug description of any of those bugs. I did get this problem whenever I tried to download anything, no matter if the download manager was open or not, or if I was downloading a file or an image. It didn't help to clear the download history either.

But it seems to be related to profiles. Creating a new profile using the Firefox profile manager did solve the problem.

So, I don't think this is a dupe of the related bugs. But the solution to one of them might be the solution to all of them.

I'm not looking to get involved in Firefox development. For that, I have too many other projects going. But since I'm using Firefox everyday, I thought I'd help by reporting some issues when I bump into them.

Anyhow, again - thanks for helping. - And thanks for Firefox.

Comment 7

[Nir]

(In reply to comment #6)
In your old profile , delete or move downloads.rdf file from your profile folder , when FF is completely closed. Now open FF with old profile. Does same problem occurs?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile#Firefox 

Comment 8

[Håvar Nielsen]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> In your old profile , delete or move downloads.rdf file from your profile
> folder , when FF is completely closed. Now open FF with old profile. Does same
> problem occurs?
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile#Firefox 
> 
Moving or deleting downloads.rdf works.

(My old downloads.rdf was 931kb, the new one, after downloading 6-7 images is only 5kb).

Comment 9

[Håvar Nielsen]

Sorry, I thought clearing the download history didn't work. But it seems to be working after all.

Opening Download Manager and pressing Clean Up. Didn't even need to restart Firefox.

Anyhow, thanks.

Comment 10

[Håvar Nielsen]

I tried to copy downloads.rdf from my windows computer to my ubuntu computer to see if I could reproduce the bug. But Firefox works fine using the windows corrupt downloads.rdf in ubuntu.

Comment 11

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Dupe of bug 161783 (via bug 256323) ?

Comment 12

[Håvar Nielsen]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Dupe of bug 161783 (via bug 256323) ?
> 
Yes, I think it is a dupe of bug 161783. When I saw what he had written about downloads.rdf being xml, I accually couldn't believe it and had open it to confirm it. This needs to change into a searchable database.

- Or if you want to keep xml, you should actually delete the whole file and write a new downloads.rdf from memory each time you need to update it. Reading it back into memory from file each time you have saved it or the user opens the download manager is a waste of time. - As long as the user has enough memory, his computer could carry a 10-20MB history easily.

- Giving the user a warning about this when his history is starting to get very big could also be a usable approach.

This should take a lot less than a second with a 800-900k file. But you could begin to see problems even with that approach if someone get a really long download history.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 161783 ***

Comment 13

[D Hodges]

I have had this problem, long delays in saving web content or when starting download manager.  I solved it by clearing the download manager list.  It seems that FireFox parses the file that contains list of previously downloaded items, if the list is very long, it delays firefox, my suggestion is to simply, periodically clear your download list.  It would be handy if there was a setting that allowed you to automatically trim the download list in download manager.