390548 - Firefox hangs and reaches 100% CPU usage when trying to access websites and turns into zombie process in XP Task Manager when attempting to close

Status: VERIFIED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[mpark1]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Internet Explorer/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Internet Explorer/2.0.0.6

Firefox randomly stops responding after attempting to open a link.  Firefox will attempt to access a link, and after about 10 seconds the status bar stops showing any progress and then blanks out and/or says "Stopped".  Afterwards CPU usage skyrockets to 100% and when it gets near impossible to close Firefox.  If I do manage to close it manually, Windows XP will say the process is not responding.  If I click End Task and check the Task Manager, there is a zombie firefox.exe process taking up loads of RAM.  This happened after I updated to 2.0.0.5, AND DOES NOT RESOLVE ITSELF EVEN IF I DOWNGRADE TO 2.0.0.3 or 2.0.0.4.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Visit a webpage.
2. Open a random link, but try to open the link as quickly as possible.
3. Firefox will hang and/or any new attempts at visiting other sites fail until Firefox is restarted.



It doesn't appear to be site specific, and has been happening to a number of my friends with different configurations.  If there is something I can do on my end to assist with the tracking, it would be very much appreciated.

Comment 1

[John Warburton]

This is happening here, too, as of the upgrade to Firefox 2.0.0.6. A couple of tabs open, then 100% CPU, and huge delays on manipulating anything in the Firefox window. When it's closed, it remains eating 98% CPU in the task list. I'm back on Sunday if I can do further research to see what triggers this behaviour.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

try upgrading your plugins (mainly java and flash) to the latest version

Also test that in Safe Mode to exclude extensions (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode)

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

URL?
what are  your results in safe mode?

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

=> incomplete due to no response

but please comment with more details if you still see the problem