562400 - Startup: Firefox 3.6.3 crashes/halts on startup (or after loading one or two sites)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Slosh]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; de; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; de; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

First off, I am experiencing this issue on all of my various computers, which are all x86-64 platforms equipped with single- up to quad core AMD- and Intel-CPUs, and from 0.5 up to 4GB of RAM. So given the diversity of my computer systems (and those I use at the university, they're not all owned by me), I guess we can safely rule out a hardware issue. 

Second, this issue occurs both under Windows XP SP3 and under Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2. 

I hope the Firefox developpers' community does realize just how important XP / 2003 still are to many users, for a wide variety of reasons (hardware limitations (not in my case), driver support, program and especially gaming compatibility, affordability, familiarity, etc.). I hope you will continue to support those two important platforms, the success of Windows 7 notwithstanding. 

Now to the problem itself: 

Whenever I upstart Firefox, it takes a long time to load, even on a quad core machine with 3.25GB of usable RAM. When the brwoser window finally appears, it either freezes instantly (the title bar shows the message "Program not responding" - I'm translating this from German "Keine Rückmeldung", so the actual message by the English Windows XP / 2003 versions may read differently, but you know what I mean). Sometimes Firefox will spontaneously recover after ten, thirty or 120 seconds, so I can type in some random URL and proceed to load that page. More often than not, it will freeze again after loading this page, often without recovering. I have to use the Windows Task Manager to terminate Firefox in those cases. 

When I restart Firefox after such a crash, it will often not even show the session restore window. The above-described problem repeats itself after restarting Firefox, up to five times. Most often, however, after the second or third restart of Firefox, it will run just fine and absolutely stable for hours ! 



Additional information: 

- My Windows XP / 2003 R2 versions got the latest SPs and patches.  

- I don't use any fancy extensions with Firefox, like toolbars or anything, just the most common plugins for flash video, Acrobat, etc. 

- my Firefox browsers are always up to date (German version 3.6.3 currently), and when I try the update button it tells me that no newer version was available

- I do have a fairly large bookmark library, around 300 bookmarks, sorted in various folders and subfolders, but this didn't cause any problems on pre-3.6 Firefox versions, so I guess we can rule out this as the source of my problems, too

- I do use antivirus software and a firewall at home, but not at the university computers, and I do experience this issue with Firefox on all of those machines, so I guess it's unlikely that the problem is related to the antivirus software or the firewall. 

- the problem occurs no matter what pages are loaded at or immediatedly after startup

- the problem occurs always immediatedly after startup, within one minute, tops, but most of the time immediatedly or after loading one or two pages (i.e. 10 - 20 seconds after startup). 

- after the second/third/.../fifth (I didn't need more than five restarts up to now) forced terminations and restarts of Firefox, the browser will suddenly work fine. Just like that, and it will run for hours, loading all kinds of sites including flash and streaming video, multi-tab use, multi-window use, etc. No further problems once the program is running after the 3rd or 5th try. 

- the above described phenomenons are absolutely reproducible, it really happens every single time - only the amount of restarts needed to get Firefox finally running stable varies from 2 to 5.

I would really appreciate a resolution to this severe problem, and I doubt that I'm the only one experiencing it since it occurs on so many different computers and configurations, and both under XP SP3 and 2003 R2 SP2.  



Greets to you developpers/programmers, 
and I hope you will fix this soon, because I really love Firefox and would hate being forced to abandon it !!! 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start up Windows XP SP3 or Server 2003 SP2. 
2. Start up Firefox 3.6.3.
3. There, it happens ! 
Actual Results:  
See "Details." 

Problem reproduces itself every single time. 

Expected Results:  
As expected. see above. 

See details. Feel free to contact me if I forgot something and you need further information. 

My computer configurations on which I experienced this problem vary tremendously, so I guess it's useless to post them here and we can rule out hardware as a cause.

Comment 1

[Slosh]

PS: Both the Windows XP (Professional) SP3 and the Windows Server (Standard) 2003 R2 SP3 editions I use are the 32bit versions, not the 64bit ones ! 

But the hardware they run on is x86-64, i.e. would be capable of handling a 64bit OS. 

I won't go into details since the problem is reproducible on all my - very different, some with AMD, others with Intel CPUs, some with 0.5, others with 4GB RAM, etc. ! - machines.

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

please try starting in safe mode, http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

slosh? results?
also, what is size of sessionstore.js file in your profile?

Comment 4

[Slosh]

I upgraded both of my x64 home computers, which I now use daily, to 1.5 or 2.5GB of RAM respectively. Since then, Firefox rarely crashes anymore - maybe once in a week, if at all. Hence I guess the extra RAM might have solved the problem. 

But then again it might also have been fixed in one of the recent updates of Firefox - I always update to the latest version as soon as it's available. This explanation seems more convincing to me, since Firefox also used to crash on the computers at work/university -- and they had 2 - 4GB of RAM all the time, previously and now. 

So I guess this bug has already been resolved with one of the last updates of Firefox, and I do not experience it on my current machines/configurations anymore.