447582 - Firefox refuse to start. Probably due to corrupt sessionstore.js

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Gur Stavi]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

This happened on my friend's computer. The "Build Identifier" is from my computer so it shows Windows XP rather than Windows 2000.

When Firefox was started it showed the following dialog box:

Your last Firefox session closed unexpectedly. You can restore the tabs and windows from your previous session, or start a new session if you think the problem was related to a page you were viewing.
<Restore Previous Session> <Start New Session>

Regardless of what I chose it would continue to the message:

Firefox had a problem and crashed. we'll try to restore your tabs and windows when it restarts.
Unfortunately the crash reporter is unable to submit a crash report.
Details: the application did not have a crash dump file.
<OK>

I repeated several times the sequence of starting Firefox -> dialog1 -> message2 -> no Firefox.

I was able to resolve this issue by manually deleting the file sessionstore.js from:
Z:\Documents and Settings\myusername\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\15nm51n5.default\

A non expert user would be completely stuck like my friend was.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Firefox should add an option to clear previous session data and delete sessionstore.js by itself or fix such instability in other ways.
Alternatively Firefox should add other utility to its installation that will enable managing profile issues from outside of the main Firefox package.

Comment 1

[Simon Bünzli]

That's the first time I hear of such a grave issue, so this might well be either due to an installed extension or a plug-in. Nevertheless:

* Are you actually able to reproduce this problem (as you claim to)?

* Could you please attach the responsible sessionstore.js to this bug for further debugging? (open it in a text editor first to make sure it doesn't contain sensitive data) - In case it's already been overwritten, sessionstore.bak might do it as well (to be sure, just copy it back as sessionstore.js while Firefox is shut down).

Comment 2

[Gur Stavi]

I can no longer reproduce it. My claim referred to the fact that while it happened it was consistent.
I actually have all the files from the profile directory in a backup but copying them back to the profile no longer reproduce the bug. I'd rather not post them in public.

After I fixed the issue I upgraded to Firefox 3.01 maybe it fixed it.

The only add on that is installed is adblock plus.

The installed plug ins are:
microsoft drm
mozila default plug-in
shockwave flash
windows media player plug-in dynamic link library

Also Firefox is used from a restricted user account.

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

Closing as WORKSFORME due to the bug not being reproducible even by the reporter.

Gur: Please reopen this bug should you encounter the same issue ever again. When it happens, please make another backup of the profile directory and check whether the issue is reproducible on a different computer. We'll then try to debug from there...