428516 - On work computer random and continuous crashes without a pattern

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 427086

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[leslie]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13
Build Identifier: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0b5&os=win&lang=en-GB

FireFox3b5 works flawlessly at home, but on my work machine, it crashes a couple times an hour.  At first I thought it was Gmail because it seemed to happen a lot when I clicked any link in gmail but then I realized it would happen when I was just sitting back reading an article.  In the image above (ff_freeze.png) you can see my running processes on my computer. Most of them are related to Norton Anti-Virus and I do not have permission to close them.  

With the crashes, I did notice a pattern that if I clicked "Restore Session" upon restarting FireFox, after a couple minutes of browsing, FireFox would freeze for 10-20 seconds, then come back. That happened a few times until I crashed.  Whereas, if I clicked "New Session" after restarting FireFox, it was stable for much longer.  

I kept a log yesterday of every single crash and what I was doing while it happened:

1. 10:31a 
2. 10:36a  in gmail
3. 10:47a  staring at the screen 
4. 11:03a  reading an article about opera passing the acid3 test
5. 11:30a  reading an article; had about 5 or 6 tabs open
6. 11:43a  clicked on a googlemap
7. 11.44a  restarted firefox then it crashed as soon as it loaded after doing "restore session"
8. 11:52a  went to a facebook page
9. 12:12p  browsing
10: 12:14p after restoring the session, ff freezes up and is using 226424kb of memory - does not crash; freeze lasts 20 seconds
11: 12:18p  hit ctrl+w to close a tab
12: 12:20 froze up for 20 seconds so i hard closed it
13: 12:47p went to View Source on our work application page
14: 1:02p
15: 1:07p i clicked a link in our application
16: 1:47p opened up facebook.com
17: 1:56p ctrl+t
18: 2:03p tried facebook.com again - crashed as soon as it loaded
19: 2:06p google.com
20: 2:12p scrolling on a website
21: 2:13p whenever i do "restore this session" it freezes for 30 seconds then crashes
22: 2:22p typed in a url
23: 2:51p clicked on a tab
24: 3:04p clicked a link
25: 3:15p ctrl+w and crash
26: 3:26 reading a site
27: 3:42 alt+tabbed out of ff
28: 3:43 scrolling down a page
29: 3:50p clicked a link
30: 4:09p typed in a url
31: 5:01p clicked a link in gmail
32: 5:20p reading a site

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open FireFox on Work Computer
2. Open a new tab, or close a tab, or click a link

Actual Results:  
FireFox completely crashes

Expected Results:  
For a new tab to open, or a tab to close, or for the link to correctly go to the linked site

When I first noticed the crashing, I thought it might have been conflicting with other software. So I uninstalled every version of FireFox I had, along with Java and Flash. I emptied out the Program Files and Applications and Data directories for all three.  Then I installed the Java and Flash latest releases and FF3b5.  

I used it for a day without any add-ons installed or settings modified.  It crashed continuously. The next day I did install the Gmail Notifier extension, AdBlock Plus, FireBug, and the Web Developer Toolbar but the crashing remained the same.  FireFox3b5 never crashed for me while actually using one of the extensions.