Note that the System Details list shows an outdated plugin.

• Shockwave Flash 27.0 r0

You can download the latest Flash player plugin for Firefox on this page.

• https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

If you have submitted crash reports then please post the IDs of one or more recent crash reports that start with "bp-".

• bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

You can find the report ID of recent crash reports "on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page".

• click the "All Crash Reports" button on this page to open the about:crashes page and see all crash reports.

Alternatively you can open about:crashes via the location/address bar.

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Mozilla+Crash+Reporter

Hopefully the crash reports will help point to the culprit.

If you set Firefox to clear history automatically when you close it, that might sometimes cause an issue where Firefox doesn't close down within the usual time (and a watchdog process "kills" Firefox and triggers the crash dialog).

Also, why close Firefox so often? You can minimize the Firefox window to save time the next time you launch a link or want to browse. That would at least reduce the number of times per day you have this issue.

Dear cor-el,

Many thanks for the link to update my Flash Player. Sadly it seems to have made no difference. I have investigated a little further and discovered the following - which you probably know anyway, from the crash reports. When Firefox is running there appear to be three instances running as shown in my Process Explorer, I am attaching .jpegs grabbed during my 'study' to show them and what they are seen to be doing. When I shut down Firefox, two of them disappear very quickly leaving one, in the fourth image, which stays 'live' for about 1 minute before the Crash Reporter springs to life as the Firefox.exe instance disappears. I guess that you will understand why this remaining 'instance' doesn't shut down.

I hope that this helps.

It is quite normal to see three or more Firefox processes running.

• one process for the main Firefox thread (user interface)
• one or more content processes set via dom.ipc.processCount
  Options/Preferences -> General -> Performance
  remove checkmark: [ ] "Use recommended performance settings"
• one process for the compositor thread (Windows;graphics)

You can find the current multi-process state on the Troubleshooting Information (about:support) page.

• "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" -> "Application Basics":
  Multiprocess Windows
  Web Content Processes

Did you submit any crash reports (see the last part of my above reply)?

If that is the case then please post the IDs of one or more recent crash reports that start with "bp-".

• bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

If a line on the about:crashes page doesn't start with "bp-" then you can click the line to submit the report and the link will be updated and gets a "bp-" prefix if the report is submitted successfully.

• please do not add the "bp-" prefix yourself

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Mozilla+Crash+Reporter

bp-8c8864ae-1e44-4edd-b4b7-548980180912

Is the latest in a long line of them.

This crash report indicates:

Signature: AsyncShutdownTimeout | Places Clients shutdown | sanitize.js: Sanitize on shutdown

This is the issue I mentioned before where sometimes the "Clear history when Firefox closes" feature hangs up. I don't remember the possible reasons that happens, but you could try manually deleting history you want to clear before shutdown to see whether that ends the issue.

The "Clear Recent History" feature can be accessed using either:

• Libary menu button > History > Clear Recent History
• Ctrl+Shift+Delete

Make sure you expand the "Details" panel and only clear the categories you want to clear. (In particular, don't clear "Site Preferences" which are permissions/exceptions you've set, and may include zoom levels and download folders.)

I have noticed the exact same problem after upgrading to V62. The process stays running after closing until eventually it times out and the crash reporter window appears. I have disabled all addons and it makes no difference. Would be great if someone has some ideas why this is happening

Hi dkon1000, do you have crash report IDs that might shed light on the source of the problem?

Generally speaking, the thing Firefox does at shutdown which seems to cause the most hangups is clearing data ("Clear history when Firefox closes").

6ab4c469-1a6b-4271-9db5-633040180927

I do not have the option selected to clear history when firefox closes

dkon1000 said

6ab4c469-1a6b-4271-9db5-633040180927

dkon1000 said

I do not have the option selected to clear history when firefox closes

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/6ab4c469-1a6b-4271-9db5-633040180927

This is reported as a "Sanitize on shutdown" crash:

Signature: AsyncShutdownTimeout | Places Clients shutdown | sanitize.js: Sanitize on shutdown

I wonder if there is some other setting that might trigger that?

What might cause that to occur. It definitely started with V62

It is still happening, I am now on 62.0.2. I have cleared the history I want to clear. I have tried setting the 'clear history' to Do NOT, I have even attempted to set to NOT send crash reports - and it still does exactly the same as when I first asked this question. If I attempt to restart Firefox during the period when that last Firefox.exe is running it says that Firefox must be closed before it can restart: it closes it and relaunches - and the crash reporter appears again! I have never had this problem since pre-Firefox history until now. Why should the 'clear history' routine hang when it isn't supposed to be running?

Another version of Firefox (62.0.3) and still that d***d Crash Reporter follows every shut down after a successful browsing session. As I previously asked: why is the 'clear history' routine running when i have instructed it NOT to clear my history (I am quite happy to selectively do that myself)?

Hi MikeyJ, does it matter how long Firefox runs before you shut it down, or does this same problem occur even after a brief session?

The crash report signature mentions "Places Clients shutdown". Places is the database that stores history, downloads, and bookmarks.

There is a tool you can use to check whether the Places database is structurally sound:

Verify Integrity

The Troubleshooting Information page has a "Verify Integrity" button to do a little light maintenance on the Places database (where bookmarks and history are stored). You can open that using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

Then scroll way down or use Find to search for Integrity in the Places Database section. At first, nothing will seem to happen, but then several seconds after clicking the button Firefox should report some diagnostic results below it.

Please copy/paste the results somewhere safe, then exit/restart Firefox to see whether it helped.

Thank you for your suggestion which all ran as you described. Sadly it doesn't appear to have prevented the Crash Reporter appearing once more after about a minute from me closing Firefox. There is no difference between having Firefox open for a few minutes or a few hours: close, wait for a minute and there it is. I include the contents of the report here: > Task: checkIntegrity + The places.sqlite database is sane + The favicons.sqlite database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: originFrecencyStats + Recalculated origin frecency stats > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 10240KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 10240KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 10240KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 7808KiB + pragma_user_version is 52 + pragma_page_size is 4096 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 123848 unique pages + Table moz_bookmarks has 5711 records + Table moz_keywords has 0 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records + Table moz_annos has 1257 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 6 records + Table moz_items_annos has 623 records + Table moz_places has 10513 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 11549 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 0 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 17 records + Table moz_hosts has 0 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 5 records + Table moz_meta has 5 records + Table moz_origins has 1990 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_origins_1 + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex + Index moz_places_originidindex > Task: _refreshUI

For what its worth I managed to finally solve the problem although I still don't know what was the source of the issue with this release. I used the Firefox sync feature to sync all of my bookmarks online. Then I uninstalled Firefox and rebooted my computer. Downloaded a new copy of Firefox and when installing it indicated that a previous version had existed in the past. I selected the options to do a completely refreshed new install (a copy of my old profile was saved to my desktop during the install). After everything was running again I entered my sync account details so all my bookmarks reappeared. Then add the few addons that I actually use and everything now seems to be working without any crashes on closing. After many years of upgrades perhaps I just needed a clean install

A Refresh can work wonders, too.

dkon1000 said

For what its worth I managed to finally solve the problem

That was very good work. Well done. Please flag your last post as Solved Problem so others will know.

Would love to do that but can't figure out how. Sorry. Still a bit new with all of this