371031 - Session Restore prompt blocks Firefox from opening a shortcut with URL specified (symptom: DDE timeout)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[germ]

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

On windows, the very annoing `Restore previous session' button that pops-up if you closed Windows with your firefox open prevents to open the windows internet shortcut and generate the windows error message

`failed to open file http://gmail.com, check the filename and try again'


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. open firefox
2. close Windows, crash or kill the process firefox.exe
3. click on a shortcut referencing a http addresse
Actual Results:  
an error box : `fail to open file <shortcut address>. Check the filename and try again'

Expected Results:  
to design (open the page in addition of the `restore session' dialog or open the page in a new tab or new page after the user choosed to restore session or not.

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

Do you see the "Failed to open file..." error before or after the Session Restore prompt comes up? I'm assuming you click "Start a New Session" if you see the error after you click the prompt.

If you want a workaround for this, you can open about:config and set "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash" to false. This will make Firefox never try to restore your session after a crash, even if it crashed while you were browsing. FWIW, closing Firefox before you shutdown seems like a more viable alternative to me.

That said, we shouldn't crash when Windows is shutting down, but that's bug 333907.

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

(From bug 372675 comment #2)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/2007030919
> Firefox/2.0.0.3
> 
> This indeed seems to be a problem due to DDE being only half-way initiated at
> the time SessionStartup prompts. Unfortunately the DDE error messages are kinda
> cryptic (e.g. if you double-click an HTML file, you get a file-not-found
> error).
> 
> Delaying the prompt (as suggested in bug 354894) prevents the error messages
> and opens new windows in the background instead. Not sure what the best
> behavior would be in that case though. Maybe using an error page instead of the
> restore prompt would lead to a nicer UE...

Comment 6

[mmortal03]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Do you see the "Failed to open file..." error before or after the Session
> Restore prompt comes up? I'm assuming you click "Start a New Session" if you
> see the error after you click the prompt.
> 
> If you want a workaround for this, you can open about:config and set
> "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash" to false. This will make Firefox never
> try to restore your session after a crash, even if it crashed while you were
> browsing. FWIW, closing Firefox before you shutdown seems like a more viable
> alternative to me.
> 
> That said, we shouldn't crash when Windows is shutting down, but that's bug
> 333907.
> 

No it pops up about the same time and on top of the restore prompt.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a5pre) Gecko/20070528 Minefield/3.0a5pre ID:2007052804 [cairo]

Comment 7

[Jesse Coddington]

Got this issue this morning when opening a link via email and one of FireFox's add-ons had an update to it.  Very annoying and can be confusing to new users.

Comment 9

[David Grohmann]

error first then restore prompt

Comment 10

[Simon Bünzli]

Resolving as INVALID since the Session Restore prompt was removed in bug
448976.