393428 - Windows freezes when I load a page with ActiveX and popups in Firefox

Status: VERIFIED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Hank Cook]

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

Firefox goes "non-responsive" and freezes the OS.  Using Internet Explorer 7 on the same site and url, IE7 handles it properly and does not freeze the OS.  The exception is "Windows Media Player"; the other exception is a Popup reference to a song list.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to url (see Actual Results)
2. Firefox goes non-responsive and freezes the OS

Actual Results:  
The only site where this occurs is GayWatch.com and requires membership to gain access.  The user profiles that reproduce the stated issues are (there are others): 

http://gaywatch.com/view_profile.php?member_id=2284
http://gaywatch.com/view_profile.php?member_id=101901

Expected Results:  
The issues are repeatable.

Firefox should handle the exceptions as IE7 does; i.e., raise the alert bar and ask for instruction (Allow Active X this time; Allow popup this time)

Extensions:
Adblock Plus
Answers
Cute Menues
Dictionary Tooltip
Forcastfox
IE View
Image Zoom
Tab Mix Plus
Talkback
Text Size Toolbar
Timestamp
Update Notifier
YMail Notifier

Theme:  Noia 2.0 (eXtreme)

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

Since the page requires membership to see, can you save a copy and make a reduced testcase?

Comment 2

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Firefox does not support ActiveX so it might be using a different media player for the content. Or even if it is Windows Media Player that launches using a plugin which introduces a slightly different code path before the content is handed off to the main player itself shared with the ActiveX version.

Crashes in plugins will bring Firefox down, make sure your plugins are up to date by going to the vendor's site. You can see which plugins you have by typing "about:plugins" (w/out quotes) into the address bar. Flash ads are notorious for crashing people with older versions of Flash. There are exploits in the wild for old versions of the Windows Media Player plugin.

If you think add-ons are involved you can try the crashing sites in "safe-mode" to disable them all, but my money is on your plugins.

If you install talkback you can record the crash and paste the crash ID here which will give us a bit more to go on. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talkback

Comment 3

[Hank Cook]

Additional Information:

When Firefox grows to 200M and 100% RAM (2Gigs), it goes "non-responsive"; also noted, that when you minimize, it DOES NOT release memory, it just keeps growing.

Suggestion:  Get this fixed or start loosing Market share, which would be a shame because allot of good people have put allot of effort into creating the product.  Remember:  "Perception is EVERYTHING!"

Timestamp: Fri - 02 Nov 2007.0824.10 (Mountain Daylight Time)

Comment 4

[Hank Cook]

(In reply to comment #2)
Here is the Windows summary:
Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

    File name: npdsplay.dll
    Npdsplay dll

MIME Type 	Description 	Suffixes 	Enabled
application/asx 	Media Files 	* 	Yes
video/x-ms-asf-plugin 	Media Files 	* 	Yes
application/x-mplayer2 	Media Files 	* 	Yes
video/x-ms-asf 	Media Files 	asf,asx,* 	Yes
video/x-ms-wm 	Media Files 	wm,* 	Yes
audio/x-ms-wma 	Media Files 	wma,* 	Yes
audio/x-ms-wax 	Media Files 	wax,* 	Yes
video/x-ms-wmv 	Media Files 	wmv,* 	Yes
video/x-ms-wvx 	Media Files 	wvx,* 	Yes

This seems to be something else; it should release memory when minimized and it does not, it just keeps growing.


Timestamp: Fri - 02 Nov 2007.0836.51 (Mountain Daylight Time)

> Firefox does not support ActiveX so it might be using a different media player
> for the content. Or even if it is Windows Media Player that launches using a
> plugin which introduces a slightly different code path before the content is
> handed off to the main player itself shared with the ActiveX version.
> 
> Crashes in plugins will bring Firefox down, make sure your plugins are up to
> date by going to the vendor's site. You can see which plugins you have by
> typing "about:plugins" (w/out quotes) into the address bar. Flash ads are
> notorious for crashing people with older versions of Flash. There are exploits
> in the wild for old versions of the Windows Media Player plugin.
> 
> If you think add-ons are involved you can try the crashing sites in "safe-mode"
> to disable them all, but my money is on your plugins.
> 
> If you install talkback you can record the crash and paste the crash ID here
> which will give us a bit more to go on. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talkback
> 

Comment 5

[Hank Cook]

(In reply to comment #2)
I just checked and Talkback is installed and functional but as I understand it, it generates a log only when the system crashes; this is not a "crash", it goes "non-responsive" and generates an error report for Microsoft.

Timestamp: Fri - 02 Nov 2007.0955.26 (Mountain Daylight Time)

> Firefox does not support ActiveX so it might be using a different media player
> for the content. Or even if it is Windows Media Player that launches using a
> plugin which introduces a slightly different code path before the content is
> handed off to the main player itself shared with the ActiveX version.
> 
> Crashes in plugins will bring Firefox down, make sure your plugins are up to
> date by going to the vendor's site. You can see which plugins you have by
> typing "about:plugins" (w/out quotes) into the address bar. Flash ads are
> notorious for crashing people with older versions of Flash. There are exploits
> in the wild for old versions of the Windows Media Player plugin.
> 
> If you think add-ons are involved you can try the crashing sites in "safe-mode"
> to disable them all, but my money is on your plugins.
> 
> If you install talkback you can record the crash and paste the crash ID here
> which will give us a bit more to go on. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talkback
> 

Comment 6

[Hank Cook]

As you were ... my recent comments here of "Firefox going non-responsive"  were reported under the WRONG bug report number.  Sorry.  Should have been bug report 401930

Timestamp: Fri - 02 Nov 2007.1006.15 (Mountain Daylight Time)

Comment 7

[Brandon Sterne (:bsterne)]

Since we don't have a reduced testcase and have been unable to reproduce, shall we resolve this bug?