435350 - xul.dll kills firefox if some font isn't installed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Graphics, defect, P3)

Description

[Lance McCord]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Media Center PC 5.0; eMusic DLM/4)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0

I haven't been able to run anything that relies on xul.dll for months, and just figured out that it's because xul.dll crashes when it can't find a font. (I weeded out my fonts folder a few months back...) Check out this crash report: http://tinyurl.com/5lb3rl

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. unload [mystery font x] from Windows Vista
2. install firefox 3 (any beta or rc)
3. try to launch it
4. breakpad every single time.
Actual Results:  
Breakpad.

Expected Results:  
Firefox.

I don't know which font -- there are a lot of them on this machine, and I can't take the time to go through and test them one at a time. But when I figured out how to view my crash reports and saw that it was xul.dll and that the word "font" kept cropping up, I put all my unloaded fonts back into the system fonts folder and whammo. Firefox comes back to life, songbird comes back to life, flickr uploadr comes back to life...

Comment 2

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Reopening because the patch in bug 434401 did not resolve this issue.

The stack signature of the crash is now different:

bp-7ef081a8-2de1-11dd-ae81-001cc45a2c28

The crash is reproducible when the following 3 fonts are uninstalled (bug 434401 comment 12):

* micross_0.ttf ("Microsoft Sans Serif");
* tahomabd.ttf ("Tahoma Bold"); and
* tahoma_0.ttf ("Tahoma").

Comment 3

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

Is Segoe UI still installed?

That is usually the UI font for Vista, but perhaps the older APIs still return the XP UI font.

I don't have a copy of this OS.  XP has a setting under
control panel -> display properties -> appearance -> advanced
-> change "item" to "message box", and the font is "Tahoma".

Does Vista SP1 x64 have a similar setting?
If so, what is the font?

Comment 4

[Lance McCord]

SegoeUI is installed, but I've switched my theme over to "Windows Standard", and the corresponding setting (personalization -> windows color and appearance -> advanced -> change "item" to "message box") is Tahoma.  Will mess around with changing this setting.

Comment 5

[Lance McCord]

All scenarious below are with Microsoft Sans Serif, Tahoma and Tahoma Bold uninstalled:

with "Windows Standard" Theme
* Firefox 3 beta 5 crashes: http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/2c6cd2c2-2ded-11dd-889a-001cc45a2ce4?date=2008-05-30-02
* Latest nightly crashes: http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/612cf717-2dee-11dd-8980-001cc45a2ce4?date=2008-05-30-02

BUT: if all windows appearance settings are changed to an installed font (in this case, Segoe UI), then
* Firefox 3 beta 5 crashes after it checks extension compatibility (further than it usually gets): http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/0d1021fa-2def-11dd-8f78-001a4bd46e84?date=2008-05-30-02
* Latest nightly seems to run without incident

with "Windows Aero" Theme:
* Firefox 3 beta 5 crashes (after doing something, but I don't recall what - maybe extension compatibility check?): http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/634c5311-2ded-11dd-bd6f-001cc45a2ce4?p=1
* Latest nightly seems to run without incident

Comment 6

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Changing up the priorities a bit. This seems like a pretty extreme case as it requires a user to uninstall core system fonts. (not likely)

Comment 7

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Confirmed with jimm, this is something we won't fix as it requires a user to uninstall system fonts. Please re-open if you think this is in error.