Closed Bug 539805 Opened 15 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Firefox Hangs when trying to use Gmail

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Version:
1.9.2 Branch
Platform:
All
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: lmesa, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: hang, Whiteboard: [3.6RC1]) 

I'm using the 3.6 Beta and every time I load Gmail on Firefox the application hangs and I am forced to quit.  I've tried loading Gmail in Safe-mode and I have tried loading Gmail after removing the Google Talk extension, but it still hangs.
Severity: normal → major
Which beta version?

Can you update to the RC and try again? I haven't had any issues with Gmail before.
I'm on the RC.
Whiteboard: [3.6RC1]
I've done both, and it doesn't help.
Maybe mac specific, cause i don't have anything happening with 3.5.7 on vista, nor Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20100114 Minefield/3.7a1pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) ID:20100114042800. Is this immediately after login?
Yeah, its immediately after log-in.  The page loads and it gets stuck as soon as I try and do anything.  I'm also finding that my Firefox is freezing when I try to go to other sites, like Perezhilton.com or huffingtonpost.com. What do these sites have in common?
Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.7.2

    File: MRJPlugin.plugin
    Version: MRJ Plugin version 1.0-JEP-0.9.7.2
    Runs Java applets using the latest installed versions of Java. For more information: Java Embedding Plugin. Run version test: Java Information.

MoveNetworks Quantum Media Player

    File: Move-Media-Player.plugin
    Version: npmnqmp 071101000050
    npmnqmp 071101000050

Flip4Mac Windows Media Plugin 2.2.3

    File: Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
    Version: 2.2.3.7
    The Flip4Mac WMV Plugin allows you to view Windows Media content using QuickTime.


Microsoft Office Live Plug-in

    File: OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin
    Version: 12.2.0
    Office Live Update v1.0

Silverlight Plug-In

    File: Silverlight.plugin
    Version: 3.0.40818.0
    3.0.40818.0

Shockwave Flash

    File: Flash Player.plugin
    Version: 10.0.42.34
    Shockwave Flash 10.0 r42

QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.3

    File: QuickTime Plugin.plugin
    Version: 7.6.3


Addons:

Adbye for facebook 1.0

Adblock plus 1.1.3

Colorful tabs 4.1

Craigslist Image Prefetcher 1.1.4

firebug 1.4.5

greasemonkey 0.820091209.4

Personas 1.5

 weave sync 1.0 rc 2
Tabs Mix Plus 0.3.8.2
well, quicktime is out of date. But, gmail doesn't use that so far as I know. Other than that those plugins all look good. Maybe try disabling movenetworks and test again. Don't often see that.
I tried to disable movenetworks. I tested it after restart and it still hasn't fixed the problem.
It should be noted that things were apparently working even as recently as yesterday, on the same environment. And that she is able to login and work with her gmail account on a different machine.
Hrmm.... Odd. This is with the official rc? Tried nightly builds on the 3.6 branch?
Is that different machine a mac?
Yeah, its the official rc. The different machine was also a mac.
Keywords: qawanted
Keywords: hang
Keywords: hang, qawanted
Keywords: hang
Okay, so I disbaled all my plugins and tested them one by one.  The evil plugin is FLASH. Any surprises?

NO.

Here is my version: 10.0.42.34 (10.0.r42).
Charles, can you take a look here?
sorry for the spam. probably should live in core plugins then though.
Component: General → Plug-ins
Product: Firefox → Core
QA Contact: general → plugins
Version: 3.6 Branch → 1.9.2 Branch
adding cheng.  he mentioned hanging gmail also on the RC yesterday when we were playing a round of pool.  Cheng, do you have issues like this and care to comment?
Laura while I am look at this please try the latest 10.1 beta version of Flash Player and let us know what you find.

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
So far I cannot reproduce this.  Do me a favor just to make sure everything is clean.

1) Clear your browser cache.
2) Shut down the browser
3) Clear your shared object folder from ~/library/preferences/macromedia/FlashPlayer  --- DELETE the entire #SharedObject folder.
I uninstalled all mention of flash on my system and am trying to download the beta of flash 10.1.  I cleared my cache. I could not find #3, I assume because I uninstalled flash.
Any more thoughts on this?
I believe there is a HTML only view of Gmail?  Not sure if that keeps from loading in voice?  I can't see where the player would be used in Gmail outside of that and I cannot reproduce it.  Are you running any other Flash application when it hangs?
Update--

I used the Adobe uninstaller to uninstall flash and then installer 10r3218 and my websites are working again.  I'm not sure what that means, if anything, but I figured I'd share.
So if I understand correctly.

10.0.42.34 - Hang
10.1.51.66 - Hang
10.0.31.18 - No Hang

Steps to reproduce
1) Load Gmail in firefox.
2) Hang

Questions:
1)If you unload all the plugins and only turn on Flash Player does it still Hang?
2)If you disable Flash do you notice any icons on the screen that look like box with a question mark (indicating where the flash file should be?)
3) If you turn on basic HTML mode with Flash Enabled does it still hang?  (Can be found at the bottom of the page in the middle just below the message window.
I am having this same issue, running Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6.  My Flash plugin is 10.0.42.34; I haven't tried the newer versions.  This bug is very new for me (I *think* it's new since I updated from RC1 to RC2).  I have no hard evidence, but I've begun to suspect that this is correlated with the "Chat" feature in the sidebar loading to some specific point.  Maybe.

Answering the questions in comment 23 for my tests:
1) Turning off all plugins except Flash, it still hangs.  (I haven't disabled any extensions, though.)
2) I haven't spotted any disabled plugin placeholders at all.
3) Basic HTML mode works fine even with Flash enabled.

I'm generalizing hardware to "All", since I see this on PPC.  And "Gmail hangs the browser" seems awfully "Critical" to me (it could very easily lead to dataloss, to say nothing of Gmail's importance for many users).
Severity: major → critical
Hardware: x86 → All
Ah, now I understand the earlier comments: it wasn't the RC1 to RC2 update that broke things, but rather my recent update to the latest Flash version.  Come to think of it, I do remember updating that not long ago.  (I verified this by noting that RC1 has started hanging, too.)
FWIW, Apple usually updates Flash on OSX machines so most users will be on 10.0.32 but when 3.6 launches with the out-of-date plugin checking... we may be upgrading a lot of users to a broken version of Flash.  That said, I've been trying to reproduce this all sorts of ways and haven't figured out how.  Can one of you try reinstalling Flash 10.0.42 after cleaning up your system with the Adobe Flash Uninstaller and see if you still have the same problem?  Maybe it's just a buggy install?
I'm pretty sure that it was indeed the 3.6 plugin checking that inspired me to upgrade (and at the time, I felt grateful for the notification).  I have just downloaded and run the Adobe Flash Uninstaller (being careful to close all programs first), after which Gmail worked fine (and Flash was no longer listed in my plugins).  I then downloaded and installed the current Flash plugin, and Gmail hangs again.  (Comment 19 seems to suggest that Laura has had more or less the same experience.)  If there's anything more thorough I should try to clean the system and reinstall, I'm open to suggestions (though comment 19 sounded pretty thorough).

Since I didn't mention it before, my specific MacOS version is 10.5.8 (I am up to date with all Apple Software Updates as far as I know).  Unfortunately, I don't think I have space on my drive to build Firefox from source anymore, but with a little guidance I could probably figure out how to run some sort of debug build if it would help.  (Time permitting, of course.)  Let me know.

Meanwhile, with 3.6 being released tomorrow it might be a Good Idea(TM) to avoid pushing this latest Flash update to Mac users via plugin checking until we've figured out what's up with this.  Even if only a limited fraction of users turn out to be affected, it could give 3.6 some terrible press.
So, another interesting finding. 

1) I uninstalled flash 10 r32
2) Disbaled Silverlight
3) Re-installed the latest version of Flash. 

And Gmail works. No more hanging or crashing!
Hmm... I wonder if it's related to silverlight.  http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/549127 has the same issue and under installed plugins (click the [+]) 2.0.30523 is silverlight.  I just installed the latest silverlight on my machine and now gmail stalls when loading chat (doesn't hang, but stalls for 2-3 secs giving me the beachball).  But I have the newest version of silverlight while the reports have older ones.

(I checked with Laura and this is indeed an interesting development... maybe we should get people to update Silverlight when they update Flash)
For what it's worth, I don't have Silverlight installed (and never have, as far as I know).  Here's everything in my add-ons manager for my primary profile (I've also seen this bug in a secondary profile with a slightly different list, though):

Enabled plugins:
* Default Plugin (2.0)
* Java Embedding Plugin 0.9.7.2 (MRJ Plugin version 1.0-JEP-0.9.7.2)
* Quicktime Plug-in (7.6.4)
* Shockwave Flash (10.0.42.34)

Disabled plugins:
* DivX Browser Plug-in (1.3)
* DivX Content Upload Plug-in (1.2)
* Flip4Mac Windows Media Plugin 2.3 (2.3.1.2)

Themes:
* Default (3.6)

Enabled extensions:
* Noscript (1.9.9.36)
* Test Pilot (0.4)
* Weave Sync (1.0rc2)

Disabled extensions:
* About:Tab (0.0.36)
* Firebug (1.4.5)
* Nightly Tester Tools (2.0.3)
* Web Developer (1.1.8)
Ok, new update.  Sometime between my last post yesterday and this morning, this bug has stopped happening (on any profile).  I would swear that I haven't changed anything since then, but Gmail now works fine.  Maybe somebody at Google fixed a bug?
I had a similar problem on Windows XP. Uninstalling Flash and re installing and disabling all the plugins solved it and now Gmail works fine and even all the browser functionalities seem to work noticeably faster.
Is this still seen in version 8 or newer?
WFM per comment 28.  (and there are other bugs that cover Silverlight iirc)
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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