587903 - Firefox hangs on Options "General" tab OR saving files OR "Downloads"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 573977

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[tk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.22) Gecko/20090605 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100713 Firefox/3.6.7 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Firefox hangs whenever I try to access the "General" tab in the Options dialogue. 
It also hangs when I try to save a page. 
Choosing "Downloads" from the "Tools" menu also freezes Firefox.

 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Choose the general tab in the "Tools | Options" dialogue, OR
2. choose "Save Page" OR 
3. press Ctrl-J for "Downloads".
All the above cause FF to freeze, every single time. 
Actual Results:  
Firefox hangs.

Expected Results:  
Self-evident. 

My symptoms seem to be related to those described here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1967081

The version of Firefox I used previously worked fine. 
Seamonkey 1.1.17 runs fine. 

I tried starting Firefox in "safe mode" but that doesn't improve things at all. On the contrary, the whole "Options" dialogue becomes unavailable (not only its "General" tab).

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please try a new profile http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles and if that doesn't work reinstall Firefox (you could upgrade to 3.6.8).

Comment 2

[andy.duf]

Being a FF fan as long as I can think back I now had to remove it as it turns totally useless with the bug reported above. Feels like playing Basketball now with the right hand sprained or breaking up with an old friend.

Strangely enough this problem is still present in 3.6.11.

As mentioned above all these guys have the problem too and the annoying "delete-this-or-that-or-reinstall" hints did not help: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1967081

Please, please, please fix this bug. Thank you.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

It's not strange that your problem isn't fixed.
The problem can't be reproduced by the developers, the QA, millions of Firefox users and me. Creating a new profile is the first step to narrow down the issue but as you can see in this report we got no answer.
The next step would be to generate a stack trace for that hang,
Follow https://developer.mozilla.org/en/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_with_WinDbg and attach a stacktrace with the "add an attachment" link in this bug report.

Comment 4

[andy.duf]

Hi Matthias
Thanks for staying cool after being barked (a little bit). Firefox and me have reconvened. I really cannot explain it and it is even hard to stand up for a causal connection between my actions and the result. But I have not done anything else and thus, it seems worth to write down what helped me.

In the stack trace "TortoiseCVS" appeared quite often (although not in an obvious relation to an exception). Thus, I have---blindly following an intuition---uninstalled (an outdated version of) TortoiseCVS. Suddenly, Firefox has worked again like a charm (also together with an up-to-date version of TortoiseCVS). Seems that an old version of this program actually was the problem. As I said, I do not understand this and unfortunately, I have not saved the stack trace as I though that there will be plenty of possibilities to do that later.

Regards
Andy

Comment 5

[andy.duf]

addendum: Additionally, I have updated to .NET 4 while installing WinDbg. Maybe that is the most important action. Sorry need to get some sleep.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Tortoise is causing the problem. This application installs a shell extension for File I/O and this shell extension hangs Firefox. Every time Firefox calls the windows function to open a windows filpicker this shell driver is loaded as well and hangs Firefox. It seems that they seem to fixed the bug in newer versions

You are not the original reporter of this bug but he never answered.
I will mark this report as dupe of bug 573977

Comment 7

[tk]

I can confirm that removing TortoiseCVS from my system fixed the problem for me as well.

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to contribute to find the problem myself but I'm very happy that I now can continue to use Firefox. 

Thanks Andy and Matthias!

Cheers,

  Thomas