First thought miss of the bp-

I will have ago

Yes it works ok for obtaining srash signatures, they changed the format a while ago and you need to miss off the bp- part.

• see https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20crashes%20when%20you%20open%20it#w_getting-your-crash-report
• one I just obtained ID: bf39430c-baf8-42e7-848f-037312110522

Hope that helps. That one is a null signature.Sorry I do not use live chat can not help of comment personally about that.

Well they should up date the help then..can only do what the help says/how to obtain crash signatures.

And all of my crashes are then null signatures..there is never anything in that field.

But of course, that doesn't help me with my crash problem though! :( And in the queue now I hope for live support (2 times get to queue #1, and then the window closes down..argh!!)

Which one has inaccurate info? I could try to get it amended.

If you try some more you may get a recognised signature. I would strongly suggest however that you try in safe mode. Also disable the plugins whilst testing. You mention minimal add-ons, but I note your system details list >20 installed plugins.

Also be aware there is a bug 633427 opening multiple instances of plugin container when cookies are cleared, longshot, but possibly that is having some affect on you. If so you may need to consider disabling plugins at OS level. And you may need to consider any settings affecting cookie clearance.

Well in safe mode - now what? Don't know anything about the add ons or anything. So how is one suppose to test?!?

If you are in safe mode add-ons will be disabled. You will still have plug-ins installed and enabled, use the addons manger within the firfox button or Ctrl +Shift +J and disable all of them. then use normally for at least 15 minutes to 2 hours to see if there are crashes. With this you are hoping for frequent crashes, it save you time!

If not it could indicate some extension or set of extensions, or what you do with them is the problem, rather than firefox itself. Then it is a case of trying the addons and plugins to see which cause the problem. Of your 20 plugins re-enable say 10 and if they are ok disable them and reenable the remainder, if it crashes diisable half of them. Eventually you will find out what causes the crashes.

You can employ some of that time in trying to obtain crash signatures, or at least the crash identities from your 35 bugs.

I may not be online much over the next few days, I am sure someone else will help, if you have problems. Hopefully you will not get many crashes, but if you do please try to keep a record of the crash ID, and post if you get a crash. signature.

Well it still crashed in safe mode - no checkboxs enabled in safe mode window.

And none of the 35+ other crashes has crash signatures..all null signature

Crash link : http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/bp-8e013cd6-cf27-49f8-a290-3a0e92110525

I was partly hoping it would be ok in safe mode. The crash report was a null signature one I notice. You had 35 crash reports, how many have you had now, and how many have you managed to check ? are all the ones checked null signature ?

It is often suggested that the check boxes are not ticked, it makes changes and can be inconvenient.

Standard releases of Firefox are supposed to be stable enough to hardly ever crash in Safe Mode, and most times when crashes do occur there is an automatically generated crash signature. I will have to make enquires about the Null signature situation.

Are you noticing any pattern to the crashes,

• are they on any particular website
• or after any particular action.

Does your computer OS itself or other programmes crash (say more than once in three monthes ) if so how often and again any noticeable pattern.

A careful reinstall could be tried, but I would tend to favour initially trying setting up another clean profile and using that, but I will wait for your replies about the crashes, in case that offers any clues.

If you want to give a new profile a bash the instructions are here

• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633427
  

Edit wrong link, the above is for the plugins bug
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows

Okay, let me answer some of your questions.

Sadly the crashes are random - and I am viewing the same sites (the same ones I have done before the upgrade). And the crashes sometimes occur with no activity (i.e. leave the browser open to my tab websites, walk away and after some time thereafter, the browser crashes).

Have done a re-install (thinking I might have downloaded a bad copy/install) 2 times already.

All the crashes are null signature - I know, not much help there.

As for the computer crashing, no - it is just Firefox crashing. The OS (Windows Vista) is pretty stable and all the programs running in the background have no crashes either. Nor have any of them crashed that I'm aware of (i.e. no message about them crashing noticeable to the user).

If I failed to answer a question, let me know in your reply. I'll be gone most of day today due to attending a graduation that is out of town. So might be some time before I can reply back. [will be here for like the next 2 hours]

No need for more info at moment, I am looking into null signatures, see if I can find out more about that.

Its a 64 bit system I note so presumably plenty of CPU resources, what about RAM and HDD .

The fresh profile is still well worth a shot, it will have been left alone in any re-installs. I still wonder if the 20+ plugins, especially if RAM is getting to its limits may be involved somehow, especially with a particular known bug affecting plugins at present.

For what its worth I have legacy machines with less than 1GB RAM available, they are capable of running two versions of Firefox simultaneously, albeit very slowly, and with limitations, but without problems of Firefox crashing. Firefox in safe mode is expected to be stable and not crash. There is one add-on I have not tried https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/crash-report-helper/ and I am not sure it would add anything but you could try installing that. I do not know if it can extract any info the standard crash reporter fails to.

In all your crash reports, I see Parental Controls over LSP in the Winsock LSP section. Try disabling it to see whether it fixes the problem.

That link for new profile takes me to a bug report about something else..nor did I see instructions there about how to do a profile. Could you please check the link and if that is not the correct one, post the good one? Thanks!

how does one disable Parental Controls over LSP?

I better let Xircal help you with any Winsock problems, my knowledge of it is almost nill, I do remember having a machine with a Winsock dll problem and it was unable to even ping a the router till I managed to update it. So it is vital to internet use.

I think that Vista parental controls may use LSP, as possibly could malware. Turn of the parental controls, at least for a test period, and I am sure Xircal will have an interest in any crash report whilst Parental Controls are off. I use XP but Vista info:

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Set-up-Parental-Controls

John, I see you put the correct link up for the profile. I'll look at it tomorrow (got back late) morning and will report if there are any crashes.

Also I heard there will be a new version of Firefox 5 coming out late next month ?!? Is there anything in that that might fix my issue (or add more headaches?)??

Thanks! Thomas

Hi Thomas,

No doubt Xircal will comment again, it would seem worth disabling any parental controls, did you have them on deliberately?

I doubt just installing Firefox 5 over the top of Firefox 4 will make much of a difference, it is I suspect a profile of plugin interaction that will ultimatly be found to be the cause of your problem. (hopefully not a malware problem, but that is now a posibility after Xircal's observation, as are other OS related problems)

I have been using Firefox 5 for a while (FX 3.5 , 4 , 5 & 6 installed at the moment, will put 7 on soon). I had already had the idea that it may be worth you setting it up so that you have Firefox 4 and Firefox 5 installed but to have two versions installed you need to master setting up a new profile. (otherwise it causes complications). Alternatively you could just try the Beta channel that now has an easy method of switching from the UserInterface ie from from the menus, but is intended for medium term switching, not choosing the version to use on a minute by minute or hour by hour timescale, and it by default uses the single profile.

John

Well we have children and thus yes we did set up parental controls on the computer. So thus we do not want to turn them off.

Also for the profile, no where does it show how to save/transfer my bookmarks/sessions. I really need those to do my work!

parental controls No problem with having them turned on but it would I think be good to test with them turned off. Why not consider setting up separate Windows OS accounts for adults and children; and for that matter for admin tasks and ordinary tasks; if you have not done so already.

I do not use Vista, and I am not familiar with its UAC (User Account Control) system, but as a general rule of thumb it is safer to do things with the lowest suitable privileges, such practices tend to provide some damage limitation when things go wrong.

Bookmarks are saved and backed up within the profile, it is also easy to make your own backups, and I would recommend it as standard practice, either manually or using some other method. Additionally you may just copy the required files and folders somewhere safe. I and others think of it as a basic flaw that firefox stores them in the profile folder, which may get deleted in some uninstalls. (NOTE the delete option - however it is worded - is likely to delete all profile data including bookmarks passwords etc for ALL installed versions of Firefox)

The point of the new profile by the way is that it is an additional one, you can have as many as you want. Creating new profiles does not normally affect other profiles. You do need to be careful with any renaming or deleting of profiles, it is safest not to delete or rename any profile; at least until you realise how to move and handle them.

It may even be sensible to have a separate work profile or work account. Just one other caution with bookmarks, restoring overwrites the existing bookmarks; so again it is a good idea to keep your own separate backups. (Add-ons are available to help)

See Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

Think the profile worked! Seems to fix the crashes (2 days now..0 crashes).

So if I backup the bookmarks from the old profile, I can restore them to the new one before deleting the old profile?!? Want to make sure b4 I do it.

Thus want to make sure the SAFEST way to remove the old profile so I don't have that profile selection at startup for Firefox every time (after I give this a whirl some more).

Thanks

Glad; fingers crossed; that worked.

The profiles are small compared with your freespace on the hdd, certainly for now keep the old/main profile as it is, and it is probably worth backing up the old profile by copying the whole folder and it's sub folders somewhere else. Two reasons at present for keeping it:

1. there is little benefit in deleting it and it WILL still hold useful information
   • that is the reason for suggesting backing it up, and backing it up out the way to any other location, such as your documents folder or the desktop, or an external drive.
   • may even at some stage be interesting to compare it to figure out the reason for these crashes
2. it is easy to use the new profile, and to transfer data and bookmarks selectively to the new profile

" So if I backup the bookmarks from the old profile, I can restore them to the new one" Maybe not the way I would do it, but yes you are quite correct, the most user friendly, simplest and risk free method is to

1. manually backup your bookmarks by exporting them
   (probably a good idea to keep that exported file as a backup of your bookmarks at the current day, they may come in handy if something goes wrong)
2. then simply import them into the new profile by
   • opening firefox in the new profile,
   • opening the bookmarks library, and use its import option
   • and browse to the new backup file to import from.

"Thus want to make sure ... so I don't have that [old/main] profile selection at startup for Firefox every time " "

You could modify the profil.ini file but again going for user a slightly more user friendly method.

TRY

1. Make sure you have a shortcut that opens the new profile, that now has the bookmarks in it,
2. open the new profile with that shortcut
3. now set that to be the default browser.

There may be some other things to sort out, but get the bookmarks backed up, then imported, you said they are important for work. Thereafter it may be worth making your own manual bookmarks at regular intervals depending on how many you add and how important they are. (There are other options)

NOTE There are two separate subjects here,

• setting a default profile (or just having the one shortcut to that profile) that involves which profile firefox uses when starting the Firefox browser, and in turn which set of bookmarks are used see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Default_browser
• setting a default browser that determines which browser (say Internet Explorer or Firefox) the operating System and other programs will normally use see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_multiple_profiles_-_Firefox#General_tips_for_multiple_profiles

See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

You left Parental Controls enabled presumably ?