448647 - Repeatable Example of FFOX3 Crashing Under Vista

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[ted thomas]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

I have been experiencing a significant number of unexplained crashes under Vista with FireFox-3 since upgrading, probably at least 3 a day. Some are random, but I am finding that more and more of them are repeatable. This one starts on a www.sun.com page concerning their BigBrother admin package. When I click on the link on the page that goes to the BB website, FireFox crashes. I tried this twice from a clean restart of FireFox, and it failed consistently, so I figured it might provide you a useful test case if you can reproduce it. Screen shots attached. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Goto:http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/jsp/descFile.jps?url=descAll/bb4
2. Click on link to: http://bb4.com
3. My Vista Home Premium (SP1 installed) reports that FFOX has crashed.
Actual Results:  
Restart & recover, same outcome. FYI, I also did two clean (no-recovery) tests with no other tabs open, got same thing.

Expected Results:  
No crash.

Screenshots:
http://apt819.postmarks.com/tech/bug.ffox.exam80731.0646.01.jpg
http://apt819.postmarks.com/tech/bug.ffox.exam80731.0650.01.jpg

Sometimes, Vista will report that FFOX is "not responding", but if I wait 10-15 seconds, the "not responding" box goes away and the session continues. My general impression is that Vista is expecting some sort of "work in progress" message from FFOX, or seeing an abnormal process state when FFOX executes a link. In most cases, this happens when I click on a link to an external website, and may be timing related.

Comment 1

[u88484]

Does this also happen with a clean profile or in safe mode?  Do you have any breakpad IDs (type about:crashes in the location bar)?

Comment 2

[ted thomas]

Attachment: A picture of my error log.

I don't have any breakpad IDs (that I know of). Don't know how to do safe mode. Ran this again after clearing history, and the error console. got the same result (crash on attempting to link to big bro website). If you can't reproduce this, I must assume there is something messed up on my PC. (Actually, it is messed up by definition: Vista.) It may be very difficult to track this down specifically, particularly if it's not repeating. I would urge you to let the developers know there is some issue here. It may just require more fail-safe measures in the FFOX code. Two key things: Windows reports the application is "not responding", and it tends to happen when linking to a slower website.

Comment 3

[ted thomas]

I'm sorry I am unable to provide a more specific context for this problem. It may be possible that my installation of Windows Vista has in some way become less stable than the typical case, but in general, it is performing as I have come to expect with all other programs. (Which is to say, not great, but tolerable.) 

However, in the case of FireFox 3.0.1, I would estimate that it crashes completely  4 or 5 times a day, and the only common thread I can think of is that it tends to crash when I'm accessing a website I would classify as 'more sophisticated' design -wise, such as the Sun website I cited in my repeatable example, or on-line banking websites as another example. I'm still running Firefox 2.16 on my XP Machine, and it's gotten to the point where I no longer use the Vista FireFox for anything critical. The performance of FireFox 3 is so bad under Vista that I can no longer recommend using it to clients.

It may very well be that these problems are either an accidental or a deliberate consequence of something Microsoft has done to destabilize it's open-source competition. This is and has been a fundamental component of their competitive strategy since they introduced Windows. Word Perfect Corporation was the dominant word-processing software provider in the industry until Microsoft released Windows, and Word Perfect struggled to release a stable Windows version of their software. Business clients who had adopted Word Perfect and wanted to continue using it under Windows incurred significant costs as they tried to convert to "Word Perfect for Windows", and eventually, most of them gave up and adopted Microsoft Word. 

Whatever may actually be happening, if FireFox 3 is vulnerable to anomalies under Vista (and in my opinion, it clearly is), it should be a top priority for Mozilla to find out why and harden the code so those failures do not occur. FireFox 3 is in a position to achieve parity if not dominate desktop browsers. The session recovery system is admirable and a good stopgap measure, but these repeated sudden crashes must not be allowed to continue, or it will constitute a major setback for Mozilla and for open-source software development.

Once again, I urge you to take this problem seriously.

Comment 4

[u88484]

Without clear, exact and repeatable steps to reproduce this...there is no way someone can work to fix this issue.

You would most likely have better luck taking this to the support forums (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+Support+Home+Page) and/or following these:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode (This is what I suggested earlier)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_issues_on_Vista
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_crashes
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows

NOTE: Bugzilla is not a support forum, so until you have repeatable steps to reproduce this...please do not comment again.

Comment 5

[ted thomas]

It appears that the add-on "Download Embedded 0.5" causes the problem. I'm relieved to know this is the immediate cause, however I think it would be useful to find out a) if you can reproduce the error, and b) what the add-on is doing to cause the crash. To reiterate:

Step 1: goto http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/jsp/descFile.jsp?url=descAll/bb4
Step 2: click on the link "URL: http://bb4.com"

Thanks for your help.