468284 - Firefox crashes at the start when the recently used 2nd display is now disabled

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Arne Christoffers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

Had moved the browser to my second display. After finishing browsing, I disabled it. Later I started Firefox again, with the second display still disabled.

Firefox should then move itself to the primary display. Instead, it doesn't open any visible window, but crashes instantly every time a start/restart of the browser is being attempted.

Workaround: Re-Enable the second display, launch Firefox, move it to the main window, disable the second display again. That can be done without even switching the second monitor on, but it's annoying that such a thing crashes this fine product.

Just in case that this problem has driver specific stuff in it, I am using AMDs display drivers 8.11

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Move browser to second display and quit it
2. Disable second display
3. Crash upon attempt to launch Firefox, everytime until the second display is re-enabled.
Actual Results:  
A hell lot of automated crash reports

Expected Results:  
The browser should move to the primary display itself, when the most recently used display is disabled, just like VLC does.

Happened with AMD display driver 8.11 but I am pretty sure that I had the same problem some months ago with older versions of Firefox and display drivers, even with a different graphics card. Just didn't report it then because I wanted to avoid having to register and create a new account for such a simple report.

Comment 1

[timeless]

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_for_a_bug_report

Comment 2

[Arne Christoffers]

I've checked this thing through a little bit more in the hope to find something that points more directly to the problem, but encountered some strange stuff instead:

1) Instead of crashing, I now had the behaviour that with the second display disabled, Firefox did actually move to the primary display, and with the second display enabled again, Firefox then did start again on the second display. That's nice!

2) Strangely though, Firefox sometimes doesn't remember being started at the second display and launches again on the primary display. Even without the disable/enable-game for the second display.

It appears to me, that case 1 is linked to Firefox being maximized on the second display, while case 2 is likely the result when firefox is just moved to the second display before being closed and started again. I doubt that this really should make a difference, however, since I definitely had those crashes and was able to stop them by enabling the display again, this all might have to do with some uninitialized variables, sometimes leading to proper results and sometimes causing strange behaviour.

The version which crashed and which shows above behaviour is 3.0.4, according to update-check funcitionality the most recent version of Firefox at this time.

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Issue 2 is another bug, can't find right now.
Have you found a stacktrace?
You can try starting in safe mode to see if this still happens.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter,

It's great that you reported the bug, but we need to move the bug toward some  resolution with your help.  Please provide additional information using the previous detailed hints mentioned in the bug.

If on the other hand you no longer see the problem, kindly close the bug by setting status to RESOLVED and change resolution to WORKSFORME.  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

@Reporter, we have not heard back from you in a while, so I am closing this bug as INCOMPLETE. You can reopen this bug if more information becomes available. Some helpful information you can provide us is found at http://quality.mozilla.org/bug-writing-guidelines. You should also use a recent version of Firefox, from http://www.getfirefox.com.