478997 - Firefox freezes on launch, even after total reinstall or launch in safe mode

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Stephen Saunders]

User-Agent:       Opera/9.63 (Macintosh; PPC Mac OS X; U; en) Presto/2.1.1
Build Identifier: Firefox 3.0.6

I downloaded (ie upgraded to) Firefox 3.0.6 a few days ago, more or less concurrently (I can't say which was first) with getting the latest Mac patch for OSX 10.4.11. All worked fine until the day before yesterday (16 Feb) when, for no reason I can think of, Firefox (which was running at the time though my Mac was not in use) lost all its log-in information. I simply went to the machine, woke it from sleep, and all of my logins were unrecognised, though the passwords were still there in Firefox prefs. Last night, Firefox crashed and would not restart. It has refused to restart since (hangs on restart every time, sometimes getting a step or two further than other times). Have tried accessing profile manager - Firefox freezes as soon as I invoke the program. Have uninstalled FF and every file with a FF/Mozilla connection, then reinstalled - same result. Have reinstalled every trace, I hope, of the only program I downloaded yesterday, which was a trial version of Intego anti-virus. And I repaired permissions and, well, just about everything, really. Maybe this is not a bug, but my system. However, I have run Disk First Aid, Norton and Disk Warrior, and ho problems are reported. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Double-click on Firefox app icon (in dock or apps folder)
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
Program sometimes launches opening window without accessing home page, sometimes does nothing at all except to freeze. Difficult to regain access to finder and other programs.

Expected Results:  
Launched, I would have hoped. I've been a relatively untroubled Firefox user for quite a few years, and I'm desperate to solve this

Here are crash reports for the time in question

Comment 1

[Stephen Saunders]

Attachment: firefox crash log

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you try a new profile ?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

Comment 3

[Stephen Saunders]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Can you try a new profile ?
> http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

I tried to do just that, but even Profile Manager became unresponsive when I launched it from Terminal. In the midst of everything, I did manage to back up my original profile to a CD, so my objective has been to get rid of everything Firefox-related and do a clean install. But obviously something is remaining on my Mac that prevents that happening. I'm not sure whether this is a FF bug or something at my end - out of ideas, to be honest.

Comment 4

[Stephen Saunders]

I'm pretty certain now this is a FF bug. Just did another clean 3.0.6 install after clearing out everything (and I mean everything). No joy. The 3.1 Beta will likewise not run for me. Have now downloaded 2.0.0.20 and it's working fine, just as 3.0.5 was before all this started. Can 3.0.5 still be downloaded? It would help until this can be resolved.

Comment 5

[Stephen Saunders]

I've now tried to upgrade from 2.0.0.20 within FF to 3.0.5 (which I note is the only upgrade path available from there). 3.0.5 doesn't work either, same problems occur whereas I had no problems with that version before all this started, I simply followed one upgrade after another). 
So have gone back to 2.0.0.20. Working fine again.
Where has this problem crept in? Is is specific to OSX 10.4.11? The latest Mac Java or security upgrade? I don't know. Tried everything now, but I'm delighted to have at least a working version of Firefox back, even though it's like stepping back in time and some things aren't very well supported.
I don't know if I made it clear to start with, but my Mac has a PPC processor. Maybe that makes a difference.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

There must be something special on your system that the profilemanager is broken.
Could be fonts or some other system issues and as win32 I don't know what you could do in such a case.

Fontbook can check your fonts, you can try to that.
I hope someone else with a Mac will help to find the reason......

Comment 7

[Stephen Saunders]

Thank you for the comments and advice. I have now resolved this by doing a step-by-step system restore, and believe I've identified where the problem lies. On my Mac at least, Firefox 3.x appears to freeze on launch after downloading Java for Mac OSX 10.4 release 8 v1.0.

Comment 8

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

My old PPC G4 has "Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 8" installed.

I just opened Firefox 3.0.6 on it, then loaded a Java applet
(http://java.sun.com/applets/jdk/1.4/demo/applets/Clock/example1.html).
I had no problems at all -- never mind any crashes.

Comment 9

[Stephen Saunders]

That's reassuring, and maybe I've reached the wrong conclusion. For now, I'm happy to have 3.0.6 back and running and I think it's safe to assume this problem has been in my system, not Firefox.

Comment 10

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

marking wfm, you can't reproduce it anymore, this is difficult to debug and near impossible if it works again