684748 - (Mostly) 6.0.1 crashes with IdVault

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[crafter89]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 PhishLock/3.5.0.48
Build ID: 20110830092941

Steps to reproduce:

I upgraded to Firefox V6.01 about 4 days ago.  


Actual results:

Ever since I upgraded, Firefox has been crashing.  It seems to crash whenever a new tab is opened (not always,  but random) or when a hyperlink is clicked (the hyperlink doesn't necessarily open a new tab).  The crash happens about 2 seconds after the new tab is opened or the hyperlink is clicked on.  So the new site is displayed for about 2 seconds, then Firefox crashes.   I tried ALL of the items on this link:  https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20crashes#w_the-crash-doesnt-happen-in-safe-mode .  None in these suggestions on this link fixed the problem.  The problem happens in safe mode also.
It has crashed 4 times in 11 minutes and another time 8 times in 60 minutes.  It is very frequent (and irritating).
One time that it could be reproduced repeatedly was logging onto facebook.  I tried it 3 times and it crashed all 3 times.  I just tried logging onto Facebook and Firefox crashed.  However, Facebook is not the only site that Firefox crashes on.  The other appear to be random.
I have never had problems with Firefox before this.  It has been a stable product for me.
Pleeeese help.  I would like to continue using Firefox.


Expected results:

I should be able to click on a new tab or a hyperlink without Firefox crashing.

Comment 1

[Thomas Ahlblom]

Please post the related Report IDs from about:crashes.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/How_to_get_a_stacktrace_for_a_bug_report

Comment 2

[crafter89]

These are the 3 latest:

bp-70d343b4-d674-464b-9612-cabf12110905
bp-76a003e3-131a-4f9e-8c0e-ffd042110905
bp-f9094b0a-3198-4ac9-8625-06c2f2110905

Comment 3

[crafter89]

Firefox crashed on me again last night before I shut off my computer.  Upon booting this morning, I tried starting Firefox.  It asked me if I wanted to restore tabs. I selected "restore tabs".  Each time (4 times) I did that, Firefox tried to come up, but would crash.  I then selected "new session" and it finally stayed up.

Comment 4

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

IdVault.XPCOM6.dll looks like a possible culprit.  Try disabling this add-on/plugin
and restart Firefox, does that make Firefox stable again?

Comment 5

[Robert Kaiser]

PInvokeCalliWorker is the #2 topcrash for 6.* as of yesterday, and RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly is #5, and there are two lower-volume signatures as well that are probably the same thing, idvault.xpcom6.dll@0x28407 and @0x0 | PInvokeCalliWorker.
All those are 100% correlated with IdVault DLLs, and http://www.idvault.com/ seems to be legit security software.

Here's a bit of version info (for 6.0.1 correlations):

PInvokeCalliWorker:
    100% (6469/6469) vs.  10% (9958/96702) IdVaultCore.dll
          0% (20/6469) vs.   0% (124/96702) 1.0.718.2
        100% (6449/6469) vs.  10% (9834/96702) 1.0.831.0
    100% (6469/6469) vs.  10% (9968/96702) IdVault.XPCOM6.dll (5.7.512.0)

RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly:
    100% (2226/2226) vs.  10% (9968/96702) IdVault.XPCOM6.dll (5.7.512.0)
    100% (2221/2226) vs.  10% (9958/96702) IdVaultCore.dll
          4% (96/2226) vs.   0% (124/96702) 1.0.718.2
         95% (2125/2226) vs.  10% (9834/96702) 1.0.831.0

Those signatures were completely or practically 0 on 2011-08-31 but have appeared and risen very significantly starting 2011-09-01, landing at pretty steady ~1300 crashes per million ADU for PInvokeCalliWorker and ~400 crashes per M ADU for RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly.

Maybe some new version of IdVault has been released on September 1st that is buggy, we may want to try and outreach to White Sky, Inc. who produce this software. The crashes seem to happen almost only with Firefox 6.0.1, but it looks like there are a few other versions mentioned as well.

Note that their website says:
"Current Versions: v.3.4 (ID Vault hardware device), v.5.8 (Premier, Portable, Free Editions)"

So it could be that this 5.7.512.0 we are seeing might already be old.

Do we also need to pull in SUMO people to document that problem?

Comment 6

[crafter89]

Regarding IdVault.XPCOM6.dll
I uninstalled the program that uses this dll.  After the uninstall, I have been working with Firefox for about 15 minutes.  It seems to be stable.  

The program I uninstalled is called Constant Guard, which is really IDVault under a different name.  Constant Guard is in a suite of programs offered to Comcast customers at no charge.  There are probably a lot of installations of it.

I will continue to work with Firefox.  If it crashes, I will let you know.

Comment 7

[crafter89]

Still no crashes.

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

I think that we should blocklist this extension.

Comment 9

[Karen Vierra]

I uninstalled Comcast Constant Guard this morning.  So far, Firefox seems to be stable now.

Comment 10

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

http://cgps.idvault.com/support/faq.aspx indicates that Constant Guard was compatible with Firefox 5, but obviously there are issues with Firefox 6. So as Matti suggests either we need to blocklist or try to reach out to a contact at Comcast or IDVault that could help.

Comment 11

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I used their online tool to request support. I am waiting for the email confirmation back - I linked to the bug and asked when they planned to be compatible with Firefox 6 and beyond.

Comment 12

[Robert Kaiser]

(In reply to Matthias Versen (Matti) from comment #8)
> I think that we should blocklist this extension.

It's not an add-on, it's a DLL (or the crashing part is - the add-on doesn't have 100% correlation, only the DLL does), and blocking DLLs is a bit harder work.


(In reply to crafter89 from comment #7)
> Still no crashes.

Thanks, that confirms that it's Comcast Constant Guard, which is good.


I guess we should try and contact Comcast on this.

Comment 13

[crafter89]

It would seem to me that White Sky would be the ones to fix this problem.  Comcast just leases the software from White Sky.  Comcast wouldn't be the ones to fix the problem.

Comment 14

[bob]

After reading this, I uninstalled Comcast's Constant Guard.

Seems to be working crash free in the first hour.

I noticed the login and password spaces had a new light blue shade when I clicked on them. I assumed that was a Firefox update. Wrong, that is gone also.

Comment 15

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I contacted Comcast, but the request I sent went to a constant guard email address. I never heard back from anyone.

Comment 16

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

A quick crash stats query shows 80,343 crashes in the last week in these three signatures. I think we need to take blocklist steps. This is affecting both 6.0.x users as well as 3.6.x.

Comment 17

[ira]

White Sky is now aware of this problem, and we are working on a fix.

Comment 18

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Hello Ira - do you have an eta on a fix? Thanks.


a from comment #17)
> White Sky is now aware of this problem, and we are working on a fix.

Comment 19

[[:Cww]]

(In reply to ira from comment #17)

Do you have somewhere we can point users to for tracking this fix? Are there steps that users can take (disabling a feature, etc) or should we simply suggest that they uninstall Constant Guard until a fix is released?

Comment 20

[ira]

A fix will be available within a few days

Comment 21

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

Ira - how will the fix be distributed and publicized?  Do you have an updated ETA, as it's been a week since your comment?  

Thanks

Comment 22

[ira]

An update to fix the problem went out earlier today.  It will automatically be downloaded to all machines running Constant Guard Protection Suite within 24 hours.  It will get installed in the next reboot following download.

To get the update immediately, click on the ? icon on the dashboard, and select check for updates.  That will download and install the update.

Comment 23

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Ira: Can we please get the version number that has the fix so we can confirm? Thanks.

Comment 24

[ira]

1.0.627

Comment 25

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

I assume the standalone Version 5.9.627 has the same fix?

Comment 26

[ira]

It does not.  We are still working on that.

Comment 27

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

In the last week, we have 27,586 crashes across all versions in the four signatures. This is much lower than what the crash was running at its height, which was over 80K. It then dropped from 80K to 60K so now it is about half of that.

Comment 28

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

A query for all the signatures in this bug across all Firefox versions in the last week shows only 16 crashes. Closing this one out as it looks as if the new version fixed the problem for those users when they upgraded.