646074 - unwanted shockwave player popup appears when clearing history

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[a. andersen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

every time I clear my history, a popup window appears "Shockwave Player error" even though I'm not opening any videos of any type - this freezes the system for several seconds and cannot be overridden and also removes everything from menu bar except the word "Firefox" in the upper left and the other Mac-related menu items in upper right. this only began happening when I updated to Firefox 4.0 for Mac, doing so only because a scary, different popup appeared from another web site - I wanted to make sure there was nothing still on my system after this first popup, so I trashed my previous version of Firefox and downloaded 4.0, now I get THIS popup every time I try to clear history.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Tools
2. >Clear recent history
3. Click "clear"
Actual Results:  
"Shockwave Player Error" popup appears - freezes system for several seconds and removes everything from menu bar except the word "Firefox" in the upper left and the other Mac-related menu items in upper right

Expected Results:  
cleared history immediately and allowed me to access Firefox and all other apps.

I have a screenshot of the popup in question and will submit it as an attachment.

Comment 1

[a. andersen]

Attachment: screen capture of questionable popup described in report

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Probably a regression from bug 625496. Fixing bug 633427 might take care of this, but I'm curious why this happens. Shouldn't plugin-container prevent Shockwave Player from caring whether we're a 32-bit or 64-bit app?

You can work around this problem by uninstalling Shockwave Player. I imagine it doesn't work for you anyway! (Note: if you see something called "Shockwave Flash", that's Flash, and not actually Shockwave.)

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

What version of Shockwave do you have? You can check with Tools>Add-ons>Plugins or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

Comment 4

[Benjamin Smedberg]

It looks like we're asking Shockwave to clear private data, but I thought we had disabled that feature for everything except Flash, because of the issues that came up near release.

Comment 5

[a. andersen]

(In reply to comment #3)
> What version of Shockwave do you have? You can check with Tools>Add-ons>Plugins
> or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

this is the version of Shockwave installed according to Firefox's plugin check: Shockwave Flash 10.2 r152. Firefox's plugin check also indicated this version was "up to date." thanks.

Comment 6

[a. andersen]

(In reply to comment #5)

Tried Firefox a few more times since my initial report and now it doesn't seem to be doing that...nothing changed in my system and I didn't download a newer build of Firefox, so can't explain why it is no longer occurring...

Will wait a few more days to see if it recurs before closing this report unless you have some new info I should consider.

Thanks for your help!


> (In reply to comment #3)
> > What version of Shockwave do you have? You can check with Tools>Add-ons>Plugins
> > or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/
> 
> this is the version of Shockwave installed according to Firefox's plugin check:
> Shockwave Flash 10.2 r152. Firefox's plugin check also indicated this version
> was "up to date." thanks.

Comment 7

[a. andersen]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> 
> Tried Firefox a few more times since my initial report and now it doesn't seem
> to be doing that...nothing changed in my system and I didn't download a newer
> build of Firefox, so can't explain why it is no longer occurring...
> 
> Will wait a few more days to see if it recurs before closing this report unless
> you have some new info I should consider.
> 
> Thanks for your help!
> 
> 
> > (In reply to comment #3)
> > > What version of Shockwave do you have? You can check with Tools>Add-ons>Plugins
> > > or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/
> > 
> > this is the version of Shockwave installed according to Firefox's plugin check:
> > Shockwave Flash 10.2 r152. Firefox's plugin check also indicated this version
> > was "up to date." thanks.

been using it for a couple days now and no recurrence of the plugin warning window...seems to have cleared up by itself? though there is a slight delay between clicking the "Clear Now" button and when Firefox reloads during which the menu bar still goes blank except for the word "Firefox" in the upper left and the Mac-related app icons in upper right of menu bar...

gonna close out this report but will reopen a new one if it recurs.

thanks for your attention to this! :)

Comment 8

[a. andersen]

actually, it's not resolved :( just started doing the same thing again - same error window pops up over the "Clear history" window every time I try to clear history. hadn't been doing it for a couple days, now started again. I quit Firefox every time I'm finished using it and always clear history of everything before closing Firefox, so don't know why this started up again after it seemed to have stopped.

Comment 9

[a. andersen]

UPDATE: today, when I tried to clear history, not only did I get that same pop-up, but every time I clicked on the "clear history" button, the pop-up appeared and wouldn't let me clear history THEN, when I tried to quit Firefox, that same pop-up appeared and wouldn't let me quit Firefox - had to force quit!

Comment 10

[Josh Aas]

Can you post CPU and OS version information for your machine? Also, can you post a screenshot of the shockwave entry in "about:plugins"?

Are you using the official Firefox 4 build?

Comment 11

[Josh Aas]

Reassigning to nobody until we can confirm, get more information here. I am unable to reproduce.

Comment 12

[a. andersen]

attaching screenshots of all the info you requested - hope it helps...doing the error message on and off for past couple of days.

Comment 13

[a. andersen]

Attachment: about:plugins

requested by Josh Aas

Comment 14

[a. andersen]

Attachment: mac info - os version and processor

request #2 from Josh Aas

Comment 15

[a. andersen]

Attachment: firefox build/version info requested by josh aas

request #3 from Josh Aas - Firefox version info

Comment 16

[William]

Same bug here. 

Mac OS X 10.6.7 // Firefox 4.0.1 (also occured in 4.0.0).

Seems to occur when on a site that has for example a twitter widget, and cleaning history.

Crashes my Firefox app, needs to force quit.

Also noted: http://support.mozilla.com/nl/questions/795395

Comment 17

[a. andersen]

just updated to  Firefox v. 5.0.1 and problem with shockwave pop-up window is still occurring intermittently - never know when it will occur, but when it does, I have to "force quit" Firefox or else I have a continuously spinning "beachball" until it is forced quit.

problem seems to clear if Firefox is restarted after a forced quit.

all plug-ins are up to date re: shockwave.

Comment 18

[xqzy]

hi all

i had been having the same bug, but managed to resolve it today.

i discovered an old shockwave *director* (not shockwave flash!) lingering around in firefox. deleted it from my mac manually, and the popup has not resolved since.

my exact steps were
1. go to about:plugins, look for any installed plugin with a filename that contains "shockwave", besides Shockwave Flash (which should be named Flash Player.plugin anyway)

2. go to about:config, set plugin.expose_full_path to true

3. go back to about:plugins, look for the location of the offending plugin file, and delete. restart firefox.

Comment 19

[xqzy]

apologies, above should read "old shockwave director plugin"

Comment 20

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

I'm marking this bug as WONTFIX per bug #1269807.

For more information see - https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/