User:CF:Fx2 Hangs

There have been several people coming into #firefox reporting problems with hangs since installing Firefox 2. As far as I know the usual tests of safe mode and new profiles haven't turned up anything, and the lack of Talkback data makes it pretty hard to debug. This also seems to be a Windows problem (but that may just be that there are many more users on this OS) and there are no steps to reproduce.

To try to make some progress, the intrepid Mook has adapted his crash utility to make it easier for noobies to use. The idea is that it triggers a crash, Talkback kicks in, and then there are stacks for clever people to look at. His page is here, the util is called crash3.

The steps to use it are

• download the pre-built binary and save it to the harddisk (the Desktop is convenient)
• open it (double clicking will do)
• confirm that it's attempting to kill the right application (firefox.exe) and hit enter. Otherwise bail out with Control-C or by closing the DOS window
• submit the Talkback report
• open Talkback (if not the first time it has run)
• copy the ID and paste it back to you

crash3 looks for the process/thread that is consuming more than 80% CPU, so we need to first verify if the person is suffering from CPU loaded hangs, or just zero/low CPU freezes.

Feel free to add Talkback ID's, conversation summaries, speculation and so on below the line. Hopefully we can narrow it down enough to start to file a bug (or bugs).

From [dMw]GhostMjr:

• Firefox 2 hanging with 100% CPU after only using it for a couple of minutes, hadn't had this problem with v1.5.
• TB25858878Z TB25858774E with TabMix Plus, Forecastfox, IE tab installed. Both Flash related (NPSWF32.dll) and short stacks.
• about:plugins, Shockwave Flash 9.0 r16 and many others installed.
• removed ActiveX plugin, still hung - TB25859864Y , Flash again
• they ran out of steam here :-(

CF 14:47, 11 November 2006 (PST)

From rocka:

• had trouble with Firefox crashing on flash pages, dunno about version difference
• TB25794238K, TB25793909E, TB25790319Q - all NPSWF32.dll with 1-7 entries
• tried uninstalling Minefield, still crashed
• downloaded v6 of NPSWF32.dll from internet, which did not crash

Came back the next day

• Opera 9.10 also crashes, IE ok (not surprising given the different plugin model)
• hunt and destroy of NPSWF32.dll and flashplayer.xpt didn't help

And on the third day

• reported that Spyware Doctor had found 3 types of spyware/malware, one of them was Trojan.Downloader.Ruins
• Flash no longer crashed after removing these infections

CF 10:06, 12 November 2006 (PST)

From Tomme:

My Firefox hangs for 10-20 seconds on *every* page load, 2-3 seconds after the page has rendered. Also hangs similarily during form entry. No differences on which web page. Have tried disable and uninstall every add-on and also tried to downgrade 2.0.0.3 and 2.0.0.2 without success. Runs on Vista 32bit.

• TB33504033K , TB33504014K, TB33503988Z all produced with crash3.exe during page load freeze.