I wasn't aware that Firefox had a problem with more than 4 cores in a processor. How did you make the connection?

If you type or paste about:crashes in the address bar and press Enter, you may find some crash IDs. You can click those to link up with Firefox's crash analysis server and see whether any bug reports are associated.

If those are inscrutable (I often find them impossible to unravel), you could post some of the crash IDs here for volunteers to review.

Unrelated to your CPU, Firefox's use of hardware graphics acceleration can cause problems due to driver incompatibilities. Could you try disabling it?

You usually need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If you restart Firefox, is stability improved?

Finally, 10.0.2 is quite old now. For your security, you really do need to upgrade sooner rather than later.

Hiya jscher2000,

Thanks for suggesting using about:crashes. It helped to narrow down the issue so I could find a possible fix by MS to test. I originally thought certain programs were having issues identifying the processor type and/or cores since I've experienced that problem in the long past. I assumed FF fell into that group since FF3.6.28 worked for years. Since examining the crash reports, it now looks like it's a multi core CPU(greater than 4) and d3d9.dll issue for me( could be different DLL for xp pro 32bit, or 64bit XP or 2003 server) after-all. The MS fix hopefully will resolve it. Just hope it doesn't mess up anything else. Here are the links in case anyone might follow in my footsteps.

Thanks again for your help. Upgrading to the latest FF probably wouldn't have worked either since it's an OS issue. I'm actually using 10.0.12 esr

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953028 KB Article Number(s): 953028 Language: English Platform: i386 Location: (http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%20XP/sp4/Fix233366/2600/free/348502_ENU_i386_zip.exe)

NOTE Make sure that you include all the text between "(" and ")" when you visit this hotfix location.

http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%20XP/sp4/Fix233366/2600/free/348502_ENU_i386_zip.exe

This isn't an issue with multi core processors (I'm using Firefox on an 8 core PC and two 4 core PC's right now). d3d9.dll is Direct Graphics, which isn't related to your processor at all.

This is how you can resolve this issue:

Update to a modern version of Firefox (either Firefox 17ESR or Firefox 20.0.1).

Then, disable Hardware Acceleration. Turning off hardware acceleration. This is likely an issue we have been seeing where microsoft pushed an updated to their Direct2D implementation that broke Firefox. We are working on a fix, but until then, keep Firefox updated and disable Hardware Acceleration

Are you saying that after installing the Windows hotfix, Firefox now works without problems on your system, i.e., problem solved? If not, please see Tylerdowner's post above for next steps.

I still need to test the MS hotfix and I will update back whether it worked or not. Clearly upgrading FF does not work. Downgrading to 3.6.28 does work. For us, this is not just a firefox issue, it has affected other programs that use d3d9.dll AND on XPsp3 with AMD Cpus greater than 4 cores.

It doesn't really matter if upgrading Firefox works or doesn't work, Firefox 10ESR is no longer supported and is now insecure, so you need to update to 17ESR at least. Try disabling HWA.

I just installed the MS hotfix and it has fixed firefox from closing suddenly or crashing. It also has fixed 2 other known programs from crashing - YES!!!! This is only preliminary, since it might have broken something else that was working. Again thanks jscher2000.

FYI- I only make one change at a time til I find the problem and fix it. Once that happens then testing begins and no more changes. Upgrading to the latest release at this time might cause a different issue and/or unrelated issue. I'm completely aware of the latest versions and understand the risks. This is about stability.

I'm completely aware of the latest versions and understand the risks. This is about stability.

As long as this Firefox doesn't go on the web, that sounds reasonable.