454752 - Firefox locks,unusable, when trying to open URL when configured with 2+ user profiles

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 395891

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Marius Hudea]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

Firefox is configured on my computer with two user profiles.

I've changed the profiles.ini (located on my computer in C:\Documents And Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla Firefox) to allow me to select the profile each time I start Firefox by setting StartWithLastProfile to 0

This way a window shows when starting Firefox and I select the profile and everything's fine.

However, if there are no Firefox windows open and I click on a link in Yahoo Messenger or The Bat! email client for example (it probably happens with any link in any program) Firefox starts but never shows the user profiles window and never shows any window, it just starts and is visible in Task Manager.

After this, trying to open manually Firefox doesn't work, because the newly open Firefox detects the already started Firefox and closes.

I have to manually kill Firefox in Task Manager, start Firefox using a shortcut or by clicking on Firefox.exe, select profile, and then click on URLs.

By the way, there is really no option that I can see inside Firefox to allow me to add,edit,delete profiles and change that option StartWithLastProfile, I found it accidentally some time ago.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. set StartWithLastProfile=0
2. close all Firefox windows, so that Firefox is completely closed.
3. click on an URL in some program, tried with Yahoo Messenger and The Bat! email client.
4. Firefox starts but never shows any window, locks and can't be used
Actual Results:  
Link is not opened, Firefox doesn't show any windows, must be killed to be usable again

Expected Results:  
Firefox should show the profile selection and after user selects the profile should load previous tabs and the new URL.

Comment 1

[Patrik Spieß]

I can reproduce this bug under Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 3.1 alpha. The firefox process hangs without showing a window. 

I suppose it wants to show the profile selection box but this is somehow disabled when invoked by the URL handler of the operating system.

Regards,
Patrik