385100 - Mousewheel scroll during page load causes crash

Status: VERIFIED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[john]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Typically, this occurs with multiple tabs up [this is my usage pattern].  The crash seems to occur if I scroll during page load.  I am tempted to suggest that it seems to occur near the end of the page load, or just after.  I further sense that it may occur on a page that is fully loaded, while other tabs are loading in background following a middle-click.  It also seems to be more likely [a sense, again] if I am scrolling not-slowly.

I have greasemonkey, adblock and tab mix plus enabled, but variations of disabling don't seem to affect this bug.  I can reproduce the bug, generally, but can not tie it to specific pages.

Restarting Fox, or rebooting the machine does not reduce the severity of the rate of crashes.  This is an annoying problem.  I can not tie it to the most recent updates, nor can I exclude it.  Fox, generally, has periods of instability for me, that come and go.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Scroll mouse while viewing a page
2.Increase liklihood of crash, it seems, with:  faster scroll; loading pages in foreground and scrolling it while loading, or scrolling while loading tabs in background
3.
Actual Results:  
Crash of Fox.

Expected Results:  
Stability and no crash

Comment 1

[john]

After testing the bug-effect, I have discovered that the same impact is had by using the Laptop's touchpad.   Scrolling seems to generate crashes.  And I have discovered that it is reproducible by simply moving the wheel quickly [or touchpad], seems more likely if I scroll forward and back.  The pages tested include those that are text only [no graphics, and nothing that would be caught by adblock or greasemonkey; consider, still, that i have tested this bug-effect with these off, in any case

Comment 2

[john]

moving the vertical scroll bar or the up/down arrow, in lieu of the mouse wheel or touchpad, also causes a crash.

Comment 3

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Does the "Quality Feedback Agent" window open when you crash?
If so, please submit the crash data and let us know the incident ID.
For more info: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Quality_Feedback_Agent

Does the crash also occur in Firefox Safe Mode?
(it temporarily disables add-ons and themes, this test will help us narrow
down the cause of the problem) --  See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode

Comment 4

[john]

For some reason, the word " No" appears in the email address, whenever the feedback agent comes up on a crash.  If you searched on that in the incident reports, you would find a slew of reports.  [I have no idea where that comes from, and even changing/deleting on one report it does not remove it the next time the feedback agent pops up.]

Comment 5

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Please run 'talkback.exe' and tell us which IDs you have submitted.
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Quality_Feedback_Agent

Comment 6

[john]

TB34013794H, TB33972850K, TB33864611E, TB33851585G, TB33851469Y, TB33846014E, TB33845874Y, TB33845806E, TB33845788E, TB33576762E, TB33576558H, TB33575284W, TB33572598H, TB33572430Y, TB33571807Y, TB33571377H, TB33571251Z, TB33566782E, TB33557290Q, TB33519710Z, TB33519526Z, TB33511261G, TB33509618W, TB33508599Z, TB33496770E, TB33416776M, TB33405755G, TB33391161Y, TB33381167X, TB33381148X, TB33381110X, TB33380975M, TB33380945X, TB33377762G, TB33376549K, TB33376474M, TB33369460H, TB33345127W, TB33342790M, TB33339858M, TB33339821H, TB33339673X, TB33338629E, TB33302960G, TB33301863Y, TB33300388X, TB33299611Q, TB33299594K, TB33299508K, TB33299485M, TB33298933M, TB33298851Y, TB33298625W, TB33286790H, TB33286647M, TB33281590G, TB33280649W, TB33279559E, TB33272690E, TB33268680X, TB33267782H, TB33248746G, TB33248669Q, TB33248372W, TB33247953M, TB33247927Y, TB33247912E, TB33247820Q, TB33247308G, TB33245600K, TB33245168G, TB33213575Q, TB33210701E, TB33137332M, TB33104817K, TB33104755Q, TB33104730Y, TB33104413G, TB33104329Z, TB33064799G, TB33061113Y, TB33061111H, TB32905569K, TB32905487Y, TB32905475K, TB32905470M

Some are restarts, that fail.

I can't tell you which are the ones that had crashed in Safe mode, or with the extensions disabled.   This is the list from TalkBack as it now stands; I reinstalled at one point, thinking corruption, and have upgraded.  These are all between 6/6 and 7/13 of 2007

Comment 7

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Thanks for taking the time to report all those IDs!
I've looked through them all and the stacks are all over the place.
There are also several crashes per day sometimes, with unique stacks.

Can you provide details on your hardware? (brand/model, how much memory, etc)
I would also recommend running a memory checking tool to exclude hardware
errors (usually this can be done from BIOS).
Do other programs have similar stability problems on this PC?
Scanning for virus/trojans can't hurt either I guess.

Comment 8

[john]

Glad to.

HP Presario Laptop 2190US, 512+256 memory; XP-SP2; Regular Updates

Sometimes, Thunderbird Crashes similarly, i.e., with serial crashes; No other software crashes, even the MS stuff...  This tends to exclude memory failures and etc.; overheating...

Regular Scans for VIrus, Troj, etc., with full competent AV program, Spybot and AdAware; Doubt this solution path useful.

A fair proportion are serial crashes, eg 5+, come from trying to restart, or even restart into a safe mode Fox.

I'd send you a screen shot of the error list fm Talkback, if you want, to show which was the first failure in each stream.  Unless you can think of an easier way.

I must say that the crashes seem, and this is an intuitive sense, to be connected with clicking on something, while something else is undone, or moving the wheel/slider.  Normally, I would expect things to happen in the background, and I can move to "other" tabs.  This pattern is the only thing that I can discern.  The crashes never happen with just one tab open.

I must admit that [while not related, directly] I find it odd that if/when Thunderbird crashes, it has problems restarting.

I should add that sometimes Talkback, though enabled, does not pop on a crash.  Also, there are freezes, unaccounted for, where NOTHING happens, while things had been going on in the background, and after a while, I give up.  I click the close button, and FF closes, but the program does not clear out; I have to manually end the Fox process before I can restart the program.  This shouldn't happen, eh?  If you click the "X" to close, it should work...?  I have not run into this with extensions disabled.

Current Extensions: Adblock+, ImageZoom, UserAgent Switcher [never switched when crashes occur], TabMiz Plus and Talkback.  

Comment 9

[john]

A thought:   

I switched AntiVir, from McAfee Enterprise, to AVG, last week.

I just had a crash which followed this behavior;

1.  opened two CNN links in additional tabs
2.  While they were loading, AVG popped up to declare that it was waiting on an email process [this occurs if the connection takes more than 6 seconds, as set on my machine].  My old AV did not do this.
3.  Just as that popup occured, Fox crashed

Makes me wonder if there are timing issues, connected with AV background checks, that occur when multiple tabs are opened, and loading/processing.  To much going on at the same time...?

The crash ID:  TB34166512K
TB34145238G  happened 15 min earlier

Comment 10

[Matt]

My fiancee and I are using two entirely different systems (she's on an AMD HP laptop, I'm on an Intel Dell Laptop) and have both experienced this bug as well.  We're both using FF3 with GreaseMonkey on XP with AVG, though I haven't noticed anything from AVG when the crashes occur.

I don't know if it helps, but the crash also doesn't bring up the regular Windows crash handler window.  Tab states are usually saved, but not always.

Comment 11

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Matt, did the Crash Reporter window open?
http://support.mozilla.com/de/kb/Firefox+crashes#Mozilla_Crash_Reporter
If so, please load about:crashes and paste a few IDs here. Thanks.

Comment 12

[Matt]

Sadly no.  Nothing from the Windows crash handler and nothing from the FF crash handler.  I think it's exiting cleanly, but it just handles it like a process kill.  (Forgive me if my terminology is off, I know just enough to be incoherent sometimes.)

Comment 13

[timeless]

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_with_WinDbg

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

do you still see this problem using FF 3.5 beta**, or latest update of FF 3.0 started in safe mode***?

If yes, please comment
If not, please close with resolution set to WORKSFORME. Or INVALID (if problem was extension or the like)

** http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
*** http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 15

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCO. Reporter, please reopen this bug if you can see this issue with Firefox 3.5 or later in Firefox Safe Mode (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode) or a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles)