Strange "stalling" issue in FF2.0

UMC · Post by **UMC** » December 25th, 2006, 11:21 am

Searching for weeks I finally came across this thread - and I find it stunning: The thread opener describes exactly my problem.

Symptoms:
* Firefox stops loading pages and occasionally shows "angehalten" (German for stalled or stopped) in the status area
* This would happen
- when I left the computer for some 20 minutes and the screen-saver would pop up
- in 75% of the cases when I try to log into my ebay account
- Frequently when logging into any webmail or forum
* Firefox remains responsive, you can close it, but a process "firefox.exe" remains stuck in the task manager
* When shutting down the PC now, it would hang and finally tell something about a stuck XPcom:EventReceiver

The PC:
Nforce2 Chipset, LAN connected to onboard Marvell Yukon GBit, ATI Graphics; Asus WiFi-B card acting as access point to LAN (bridged to LAN), German Windows XP Pro SP2, up-to-date patchlevel, up-to-date drivers

What I tried so far:
* Recreated the profile:
- unintstall FF,
- delete all related folders in "Documents and Settings",
- deleted the Program-directory,
- killed all related regristry entries under "xx\Software\",
- uninstalled Sun Java & Getright
* Did not help. With or without extensions (FlashGot, IEtab, Tabbrowser Preferences)
* Reinstalled the PC from scratch (!) - thought it was a good idea after 2 years anyway.
* Same as before. With FF 2.0 or 2.0.0.1.

What I found:
* It does _not_ happen when Outpost 3.0 is not running. And yes, Outpost is aware of the 2.0 or 2.0.0.1 binary (see this, VanillaMozilla ;-)

). It would not block upfront, it would work for a while. Also there are no blocking messages to be found in the FW log.

What else:
Another PC with Nforce2 and very similar setup is doing fine, also my 3rd one with Nforce 6150. No issues there.

I started "flaming" in the Agnitum/Outpost forums, as I definitely can tell, it is somewhat related to Outpost. But now reading this thread it seems to me that Outpost is not the only app causing this. There might be something down in the process communication that causes this annoying problem.

Really hope this gets fixed - in Outpost or Firefox.

hk999 · Post by **hk999** » December 25th, 2006, 11:46 am

RudiJN wrote:I have the same problem, for no apparent reason Firefox stalls and although it CAN be shut down the process CANNOT (in taskmanager the firefox process keeps on running no matter what) only reboot helps.

This occurs on both my XP SP2 and my XP SP1 pc's.

I noticed that Rob_d had installed CA Internet Security
, which I am running on both pc's... Perhaps this is the common denominator????

I had the same problem, so I uninstaled the whole thing until later, it's just too much of pain!

LanFear · Post by **LanFear** » December 26th, 2006, 9:09 am

UMC wrote:* It does _not_ happen when Outpost 3.0 is not running. And yes, Outpost is aware of the 2.0 or 2.0.0.1 binary (see this, VanillaMozilla ). It would not block upfront, it would work for a while. Also there are no blocking messages to be found in the FW log.

Really hope this gets fixed - in Outpost or Firefox.

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing your findings! Do you know if Firefox 2 works fine with other versions of Outpost than 3.0?

UMC · Post by **UMC** » December 26th, 2006, 10:32 am

LanFear wrote: Do you know if Firefox 2 works fine with other versions of Outpost than 3.0?

I haven't tried yet on the problematic PC. But I can confirm that FF 2.0 runs flawlessly on my younger one's computer - another Nforce2 with German XP Home SP2, fully patched, this one with Outpost 2.5.

The problem is, that at the very same time FF 2.0 came out, I had the opportunity to upgrade to OP 3.0. So my main PC never saw the "interesting" combination FF2-OP2.5.

But I guess I'm too curious - so in the next few days I'll give it a try. I just have to do some backup-jobs before ;-)

LanFear · Post by **LanFear** » December 26th, 2006, 10:39 am

UMC wrote:The problem is, that at the very same time FF 2.0 came out, I had the opportunity to upgrade to OP 3.0. So my main PC never saw the "interesting" combination FF2-OP2.5.

But I guess I'm too curious - so in the next few days I'll give it a try. I just have to do some backup-jobs before

I'm curious about your results! I also wonder what the newest Outpost 4.0 would give...

It's interesting that you did a complete reinstall and still had the problem. I don't want to give up on either Firefox nor Outpost. :-P

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 26th, 2006, 12:54 pm

LanFear wrote:It's just that I work in the IT business, I've upgraded my browsers, firewalls etc. numerous times....

Sorry, it's hard to tell what has been done, especially if one is out of time to read posts carefully.

LanFear wrote:But - it seems as if I've recuded my stalls a lot (maybe even eliminated?!) now that I've uninstalled almost all my add-ons. (Which is weird - shouldn't "Safe Mode" simulate just that?)

I suppose it should, but who knows?. If troubleshooting gets complicated, there's no substitute for just a clean start, which often works even if you have no idea what's causing the problem. A new profile sometimes does wonders, and it's always reversible. See my signature.

LanFear · Post by **LanFear** » December 26th, 2006, 2:53 pm

VanillaMozilla wrote:
LanFear wrote:It's just that I work in the IT business, I've upgraded my browsers, firewalls etc. numerous times....
Sorry, it's hard to tell what has been done, especially if one is out of time to read posts carefully.

Absolutely, I know how it can be.

VanillaMozilla wrote:If troubleshooting gets complicated, there's no substitute for just a clean start, which often works even if you have no idea what's causing the problem. A new profile sometimes does wonders, and it's always reversible. See my signature.

Yep, no luck there.

But UMC here has maybe identified the problem in my case; some kind of issue between Firefox 2 and the firewall, Outpost 3. Hm, we might be on the track of something!

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 26th, 2006, 3:26 pm

I looked up the description of your problem.

LanFear wrote:After a while, I get duplicate firefox.exe processes, and then Firefox stops working. The only way to get things going again is to kill the processes and restart Firefox.

I don't think a firewall could cause that problem. A firewall either blocks access or attempts to do content filtering, but it doesn't start duplicate Fx processes, as far as I know. That is usually attributed to malware. There's some info on it here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox.exe_always_open . When you get it figured out, let me know. I've got a similar problem on a Win 98SE system, and it may cause me to scrap the computer.

UMC · Post by **UMC** » December 26th, 2006, 5:00 pm

Gentlemen, I have some news (although not sure if they are good news): My wife just experienced 2 times a locked FF 2.0 on my little daughter's PC, running with Outpost 2.5.

Still no absolute proof, but:
* We do experience the lockups on 2 different PCs, on both an elderly version of Outpost is installed
* We did not experience _any_ lockup on a frequently used PC with FF 2.0 and Nvidia Nforce Firewall
* I did not yet have a locked up FF 2.0 on PCs with Outpost while Outpost was terminated on purpose.

I'll verify the last statement for a few more days. However, the fact that we faced the issue on Outpost 3.0 _and_ 2.5 relieves me from a long backup-test-restore-session on my main PC.

VanillaMozilla, the KB entry you are referencing is known to me and does not apply. Definitely not.

dsp · Post by **dsp** » December 28th, 2006, 8:25 am

Hi,
I'm having the exact same problem/pathology as the thread starter with FF 2.0.
Never experienced this with FF 1.5.x
I also noticed that you can't copy & paste anymore from/to FF.
All downloads stall too.

Win 2k
Athlon XP
nforce 2
2 GB ram

Old Limpet235 · Post by **Old Limpet235** » December 29th, 2006, 7:12 am

@dsp...For your copy n paste issue, try here >
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Clipboard_not_working
n D/L's >
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs

UMC · Post by **UMC** » December 29th, 2006, 12:19 pm

Well - at least for me all the "nice" suggestions of KB articles do not apply.

I ran my main PC without Outpost for 3 days. Zero problems with Firefox 2.0.0.1. Today I rebooted and enabled Outpost and it didn't take more than 25 minutes until I faced a stalled FF.

Same goes for the other PC with OP 2.5.

So I guess it is time to update http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs section "Other causes of hanging" with a paragraph about Outpost 2.5 and 3.0

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 29th, 2006, 12:31 pm

Good work. Exact name of product? Outpost Pro Firewall? Outpost Internet Security or whatever?

UMC · Post by **UMC** » December 29th, 2006, 2:53 pm

VanillaMozilla wrote:Good work. Exact name of product? Outpost Pro Firewall? Outpost Internet Security or whatever?

Outpost Firewall Pro ver. 3.0.557.5918 (437) together with FF 2.0.0.1 (German)

and

Outpost Firewall Pro ver. 2.7.493.5421 (416) with FF 2.0 (German)

VanillaMozilla · Post by **VanillaMozilla** » December 29th, 2006, 3:14 pm

According to your original description, it looks like Fx continues to work, except that it frequently fails to load Web pages. Is that correct? It looks like maybe the report belongs in "Error loading Websites" instead of "Firefox hangs".

And did that solve the unterminated process and XPCOM problems when you shut down the computer? Thanks.

Strange "stalling" issue in FF2.0

Re: Firefox stalls, can't terminate process