769915 - Intermittent test failures caused by the Windows security center popup balloon

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations Graveyard :: CIDuty, task, P2)

Description

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://tbpl.mozilla.org/php/getParsedLog.php?id=13128478&tree=Firefox

The Windows Security Center popup balloon appeared during the test, causing the test to time out and fail (along with a few others). This is something that can be easily disabled with a registry key.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307729

Comment 1

[Armen [:armenzg]]

Attachment: "Your computer is at risk" ballon tip for WinXP

Thanks for reporting this.
How often does this happen?
I assume this has simply happening for a very long time.

###################################
To disable balloon tips in the notification area, follow these steps:

    Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
    Locate the following subkey:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
    Right-click the right side pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
    Double-click EnableBalloonTips, and then give it a value of 0.
    Close Registry Editor.
    Log off Windows, and then log back on.

Comment 2

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://tbpl.mozilla.org/php/getParsedLog.php?id=13942638&tree=Mozilla-Inbound

Comment 3

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://tbpl.mozilla.org/php/getParsedLog.php?id=13946533&tree=Mozilla-Inbound

Comment 4

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://tbpl.mozilla.org/php/getParsedLog.php?id=13946575&tree=Services-Central

Comment 5

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

(In reply to Armen Zambrano G. [:armenzg] - Release Engineer from comment #1)
> How often does this happen?

When filing oranges that have screenshots in the log, I typically open the screenshot to see whether I should attach it to the bug. In the course of doing this, I have seen this particular popup a dozen times maybe over the last few months. 

I queried someone (:ted?) about it when I first saw it (since the orange was a bit weird if I remember correctly), but he said unlikely to be the cause in that instance - but perhaps it either was the cause then (and every time since), or it can at least be a contributing factor? I don't think the balloons steal focus (from my own experience using Windows), so maybe they are just coincidental?

Either way, guess doesn't hurt to turn them off in case :-)

Comment 6

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

(In reply to Ed Morley [:edmorley] from comment #5)
> I don't think the balloons steal focus (from my own experience using Windows),
> so maybe they are just coincidental?

s/I don't think/However, I don't think/

Comment 7

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

I'd be surprised if the answer to "how often?" was anything other than "every single time that a WinXP test has timed out since we first started getting screenshots for timeouts on Windows." I tried a few times after we started getting them to get someone excited about this, but then started toeing the party line that the balloon is utterly harmless, always present, and not ever at fault for the timeout.

Comment 8

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

This *should* be something simple I can do with OPSI, but nothing is ever simple with OPSI. Rather than block on that, I've deployed the change by hand to staunch the failures and will continue to work on the OPSI solution.

The following slaves are down and have not received the registry setting yet:

talos-r3-xp-ref (bug 781835)
talos-r3-xp-028 (bug 764599)

Comment 9

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Thank you :-D

Comment 10

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

(In reply to Chris Cooper [:coop] from comment #8) 
> talos-r3-xp-ref (bug 781835)
> talos-r3-xp-028 (bug 764599)

Both of these machines have been updated. I've filed bug 819367 to have a new ref image taken.

I did try to create an OPSI package to do this, but it wasn't working (still don't know why). After we decided to stop adding new packages to OPSI, I just gave up.