Firefox crashes on webpage opening in New Tab since 69.0.0, random occurence, does not generate crash reports.
Hello,
Finally decided to make a topic about it as all of my attempts in the past few months to fix it have been in vain. Starting from Firefox 69.0 or even perhaps in 68.0, I cannot exactly remember, Firefox started to randomly crash when I opened a New Tab and tried either Googling or opening a webpage through the address bar. This crash does not create any crash reports, going to "about:crashes" does not reveal anything, neither are any crash reports stored locally.
I have tried running Firefox in safe mode, without extensions, deleting my cache files from APPDATA/Local, deleting my profile files from APPDATA/Roaming and a lot of other stuff I honestly cannot remember anymore, but nothing has helped. I even tried downgrading to 68.0, but I received some kind of big warning message and did not want to proceed.
The issue itself in essence is a full freeze, which sometimes takes a second until firefox crashes, but sometimes takes 15 seconds. During that time the only thing I can see in Task Manager is that Firefox has a "Very High" power usage, which is bizarre, since I am not even running it on a notebook (i7-9700K factory clock, RTX 2080S, 16GB DDR4 RAM). As said, it never produces a crash report, so I have been reluctant in reporting it in the past. And since it is random and can take many hours to occur (or can occur first thing after I turn on PC and open Firefox), it is basically impossible for me to record a video about it.
(While writing this, I went to look something in a new tab, tried opening my Gmail account and the crash occurred. Added a task manager screenshot about what I meant by power usage. Fortunately it allowed me to restore the session and I did not have to re-type the entire text)
From what I can gather, the issue started to happen around the time I switched over from GTX 1070 to RTX 2080 SUPER GPU. But I cannot really imagine how a GPU upgrade could influence Firefox stability. Even less so since the same Firefox issue has persevered through multiple GPU driver updates.
Hope you guys have some suggestions what to try here. Perhaps some changes in about:config that could help me out here?
Thanks in advance, Rasmus
Chosen solution
I feel like the issue might have fixed itself in the Firefox 71.0 update (got it several days ago, 64-bit version, and Firefox has not crashed a single time). It does seem that there may be some kind of countermeasure in place now as in certain cases of either opening the browser or a new tab, there is a micro stutter, but the browser does not crash and continues to load the content correctly.
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Installed Plug-ins
Shockwave Flash 32.0 r0 OpenH264 Video Codec Widevine Content Decryption Module
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- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0
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Question owner
As a little update, it looks that it also sometimes crashes, when opening links from an external application, like Discord. Can even occur when an instance of Firefox is not yet running (page is opened as New Window and then crashes before any content is loaded).
Helpful Reply
Many have reported issues using the 64bit Firefox. Install the 32bit version from; Download Firefox For All languages And Systems {web link}
Question owner
FredMcD said
Many have reported issues using the 64bit Firefox. Install the 32bit version from; Download Firefox For All languages And Systems {web link}
Looks to have worked. Topic can be marked as closed.
Helpful Reply
I am glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If you haven't already, please select the answer that solves the problem. This will help other users with similar problems find the solution.
Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support.
Question owner
Hmm,
Just had another crash, the same kind that leaves no crash logs etc while using the 32bit version of Mozilla Firefox [70.0.1 (32-bit)]. It did take a few days for it to occur, but that only means the problem is still there unresolved. :(
Any further ideas?
Thanks in advance, Rasmus
Please provide a public link (no password) that we can check out. No Personal Information Please !
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Question owner
FredMcD said
Please provide a public link (no password) that we can check out. No Personal Information Please !
Could you please elaborate on this? Unclear what is expected of me here.
A link to the web page you are having trouble with.
Question owner
There is no specific web page, it could be with anything. Even a random google search.
The issue in most cases occurs when I already have a tab open, I open a new tab, go to address bar, either type something there for google search or open a page through the browsing history (in the address bar field). Firefox fails to load the page and instead crashes.
Occasionally it also crashes when I try to open a website link from a 3rd party application, Discord for example, even if Firefox is not running. In such a case it opens an instance of Firefox and immediately crashes before managing to load any content.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}
A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?
Start your Computer in safe mode with network support. Then start Firefox. Try Secure websites. Is the problem still there?
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Linux+Safe+Mode Starting Any Computer In Safe Mode; Free Online Encyclopedia
Question owner
FredMcD said
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?
I will be testing this method for a day or two to check if there is any difference.
But the most questionable thing about it is that I have the plugins synced with my Firefox account and I use it very actively in my notebook as well (no issues there) and at the office (no issues there either). The only place these crashes occur is my home primary PC.
In a few days I will post an update.
Unfortunately since you have no crash logs, and Firefox crashes silently, this is hard to investigate. Do you have any crash reporting turned off in Preferences or if you search "crash" in about:config? I have no idea if crashdumps are saved locally if sending reports is turned off.
It may be that there is an issue with the gfx drivers which only Firefox is provoking. You may try a repair operation if you feel so inclined. Download the card's driver package if you do not already have installation media or if there is a newer version you have updated. Uninstall the device (e.g. from Device Manager in Windows) and reboot. If driver installation dialog does not begin automatically, it can be initiated manually (e.g., from the device entry in Windows device Manager). This will fix corrupt configuration/registry entries and corrupted driver files.
Question owner
crankygoat said
Unfortunately since you have no crash logs, and Firefox crashes silently, this is hard to investigate. Do you have any crash reporting turned off in Preferences or if you search "crash" in about:config? I have no idea if crashdumps are saved locally if sending reports is turned off. It may be that there is an issue with the gfx drivers which only Firefox is provoking. You may try a repair operation if you feel so inclined. Download the card's driver package if you do not already have installation media or if there is a newer version you have updated. Uninstall the device (e.g. from Device Manager in Windows) and reboot. If driver installation dialog does not begin automatically, it can be initiated manually (e.g., from the device entry in Windows device Manager). This will fix corrupt configuration/registry entries and corrupted driver files.
Here are my crash-related settings. Anything I should turn on?
Regarding using it in Safe Mode, it has not crashed yet, but certain YouTube and Twitch related actions are super laggy in Safe Mode, like opening a stream etc. Also I only recently noticed that you have to manually re-enable the prompt to appear, so for a long time when I thought I was using Safe Mode, I actually was not.
Currently would mostly prefer to get some kind of crash reporting to get working and then looking into what is actually causing it. Corrupt registry is a high possibility because in this particular PC, the registry has not been wiped clean for some 4 years now (PC has never been formatted, there was a Win7 -> Win10 upgrade some 3-4 years ago).
Chosen Solution
I feel like the issue might have fixed itself in the Firefox 71.0 update (got it several days ago, 64-bit version, and Firefox has not crashed a single time). It does seem that there may be some kind of countermeasure in place now as in certain cases of either opening the browser or a new tab, there is a micro stutter, but the browser does not crash and continues to load the content correctly.
Good to hear. Safe surfing.