369052 - Setting Firefox as the default download action for a non supported filetype enters a loop

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 218257

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Theresa Roberts-Wall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

PROBLEM:   (Untitled) tabs opening back to back to back to back to back.  So fast I can’t keep up to close them and by the time I click on Task Manager, I've got 100 plus (untitled) tabs open!  And when this widespread propagation is going on, there's nothing else that I can do on the system, it's like FLASH, FLASH, FLASH.  I can't CLOSE the program (unless I whack it in Task Mgr) Can’t get hold of it to  MINIMIZE it, or hit the "stop" button or "refresh". 

CONDITIONS WHEN THIS PROBLEM OCCURS:   Definitely it occurs when my “download is complete” window pops up,  and in the time I’ve been observing this, it happens every time I download a .pdf document.  However, it is not restricted to .pdf files and it doesn’t happen with all downloads.

 HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN DOING ON::    A few days.  I've been running Mozilla/Firefox for a little over a year on three different computers, pretty much 20 hours/day 7 days and never saw this before.  My computers are not networking or even running the same programs, I’ve been  sloppy this past year, but I haven’t run into anything like this before. 

WHAT I HAVE DONE TO TRY TO REMEDY THE PROBLEM:   Deleted all temp files.   Keep the cache for Downloads clear.  Uninstalled the Mozilla/Firefox program and reinstalled a clean download.   Didn't help.    I switched from  having the program restore last settings on restart to start new session every time.  Doesn’t help.  All of a sudden, I just realized, even BEFORE downloading something, just after opening the Firefox program again, I get this flash flash flash one after another (untitled) tab, (untitled) tab.  It's like a firefight or fireworks . 

RESOURCES USED:   All it's doing is tying up my browing and downloading time, energy, blah blah blah.  It's not using ANY computer resources.   No CPU, no extra anything for Firefox, even when it's up there over 100 new tabs.

 







Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Find pdf doc on web.  Open it.  Download it
2.  Find pdf doc on web.  Open it.  Save it to hard drive.
3.  Find pdf doc on web.  Open it.  Save it to yahoo.
Actual Results:  
As above.

Expected Results:  
Undesired rebel (untitled) tabs open back to back to back so fast I can't click on them fast enough to keep up.  I have to shut the whole thing down in Task Mgr.

(Hey I realize I must have reset something to cause this)

What it did before this problem started.  Tabs open when I give it a command to open a new tab.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Do you setup a filehandler for pdf files in Firefox ?

Comment 2

[Mike Osswald]

This may not be a bug. I had the same problem with .ZIP files; I reset my FF settings, had no extensions and still the problem continued.

IMMEDIATELY after a .ZIP download is complete the original window begins spawning untitled tabs as fast as possible.

But I fixed it: 
In my Tools>Options>Content>Filetypes>download actions -- 

ZIP -- 
File Type: WinZip File
Action: OPEN WITH FIREFOX

Somehow I told Firefox that it could open .zip files - when I removed this the problem stopped.


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

Comment 3

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

this is probably the same behaviour as Bug 358297, but here user action is required, so setting firefox as the default handler for a non supported format put it in a loop where system tries to open firefox -> system -> firefox -> ...

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

no, it's not the same behaviour of Bug 358297, i'm rethinking about it: there the browser is setup as a handler in the OS, while here it is setup as the default download action. 
Probably something could be made to avoid Firefox accept a default download action on unknown filetypes.

Not sure what is the right component here, download manager or file handling?

Comment 6

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

confirming, we have enough reports of the problem... 

firefox should not set default download action to itself if does not support a filetype

CC-ing sdwilsh, don't know if something could be done in the download manager to avoid this

Comment 7

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Valid on Trunk too

also cc-ing jmathies that could be interested for the new application picker

Comment 8

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Certainly something users could accidentally get themselves into. Interesting to solve though since the file goes from ff -> os -> ff -> os -> .... I'll take a look.

Comment 12

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Same happens with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032619 Firefox/3.0b5 ID:2008032619.

jmathies, any news from your side?

Comment 13

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

This is a known issue. I guess if it's on all platforms we'll have to split it out since fixing it will be different for each platform. So far this fix is not planned for Fx3.