486507 - Investigate Chrome registration failed messages on every startup

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[[:Cww]]

Lots of users are reporting that they get Chrome registration failed messages after updating and at every startup.  Per bug 401769, the solutions include disabling the faulty extension(s) and/or running as an administrator once.

However the warning is particularly not helpful and confusing so this is a bug to take a look at the causes of this message (it's pretty common) and to resolve either by addressing those or providing a more useful dialog/warning.

Comment 1

[John P Baker]

(In reply to comment #0)
> However the warning is particularly not helpful and confusing so this is a bug
> to take a look at the causes of this message (it's pretty common) and to
> resolve either by addressing those or providing a more useful dialog/warning.

See also bug 302527

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Rob, could you follow up with Cheng on this?

Comment 3

[[:Cww]]

We see spikes in these complaints after updates.

Here are (some) forum threads that mention it.  If you post in any of them, it sends an email to the user -- maybe we can get a useful response.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/484622
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/485436
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/485592
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/486168
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/486228
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/486385
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/486644
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487028
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487180
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487597
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487600
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487641
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/487644
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/488235
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/488868
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/488910
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/489271
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/489300
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/489623
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/489947
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/490065
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/490340

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

If we are seeing spikes after app update I suspect we may have old extensions hanging about that haven't been cleaned up properly.

Dave, I'd like to get your thoughts on this.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop] (PTO until Aug 21st)]

That the error goes away when running as administrator suggests that the user has some extensions installed that they do not have write access to. Firefox will be trying to write a chrome.manifest file out for them and failing. We could I guess get rid of the warning in that case, but then that warning is gone in 3.6 anyway.

I'm not totally sure why this would cluster around app update unless maybe we end up re-registering all extensions at that time, though that shouldn't normally happen.

Comment 6

[[:Cww]]

This seems predominantly vista if it helps any... got a bunch of these this week as well but probably a result of the 3.5.5 updated.

Comment 7

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Cww, if you could zip up your extensions directory and send them to me at rstrong at mozilla dot com it might provide a clue as to the cause. Thanks.

Comment 8

[Andy McKay]

Legacy extensions are no longer valid in Firefox 57, closing.