Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox crashes

  • 55 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 25 views
  • Last reply by n0diamond

more options

When Firefox crashes it displays a dialog, I give permission to send a report to Mozilla, and the dialog says there was a problem submitting the report.

Firefox page "about:crashes" lists 2 crashes today, 2 crashes a few days ago, and some older ones.

When I click a crash ID for example db81f3f6-cd44-4ce8-8268-de23913c35d9 (https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/about/throttling) it gets a "Page not found" (https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/about/throttling).

Upgrading from Firefox 30 to Firefox 31 did not change the frequency of crashes.

Submitted Crash Reports Report ID Date Submitted db81f3f6-cd44-4ce8-8268-de23913c35d9 2014/08/06 12:33 286aeecd-71e3-41ca-ab9b-784439ceba97 2014/08/06 12:31 ae650186-1937-487d-b07d-34b5adf70690 2014/08/03 10:36 7815703a-97a9-41e6-8d30-6926998d6dc9 2014/08/03 9:39 bp-8b68bdca-3c55-4ce1-996e-221582140730 2014/07/30 17:32 bp-d1d8974b-fd8b-4ab9-94e5-c16422140729 2014/07/30 7:59 5a488610-3497-4bd1-a7a4-8657e31f5e2e 2014/07/27 15:16 077e5047-1525-472e-b550-3dd3fc19e368 2014/07/19 9:14 cd0c8327-5e80-44fa-958c-4ee24d475933 2014/07/16 18:50 ce16d124-586b-43f5-8e5c-ad74a203fd98 2014/07/13 7:34 7d3beb50-124d-471d-8500-4d3d6b9a9b48 2014/07/09 14:04 142f4292-767d-4abd-b5e7-37919fe61dcd 2014/07/06 12:14

When Firefox crashes it displays a dialog, I give permission to send a report to Mozilla, and the dialog says there was a problem submitting the report. Firefox page "about:crashes" lists 2 crashes today, 2 crashes a few days ago, and some older ones. When I click a crash ID for example db81f3f6-cd44-4ce8-8268-de23913c35d9 (https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/about/throttling) it gets a "Page not found" (https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/about/throttling). Upgrading from Firefox 30 to Firefox 31 did not change the frequency of crashes. Submitted Crash Reports Report ID Date Submitted db81f3f6-cd44-4ce8-8268-de23913c35d9 2014/08/06 12:33 286aeecd-71e3-41ca-ab9b-784439ceba97 2014/08/06 12:31 ae650186-1937-487d-b07d-34b5adf70690 2014/08/03 10:36 7815703a-97a9-41e6-8d30-6926998d6dc9 2014/08/03 9:39 bp-8b68bdca-3c55-4ce1-996e-221582140730 2014/07/30 17:32 bp-d1d8974b-fd8b-4ab9-94e5-c16422140729 2014/07/30 7:59 5a488610-3497-4bd1-a7a4-8657e31f5e2e 2014/07/27 15:16 077e5047-1525-472e-b550-3dd3fc19e368 2014/07/19 9:14 cd0c8327-5e80-44fa-958c-4ee24d475933 2014/07/16 18:50 ce16d124-586b-43f5-8e5c-ad74a203fd98 2014/07/13 7:34 7d3beb50-124d-471d-8500-4d3d6b9a9b48 2014/07/09 14:04 142f4292-767d-4abd-b5e7-37919fe61dcd 2014/07/06 12:14

All Replies (20)

more options
more options

Hello,

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information.
Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions and some Preferences.

  • Open websites will not be saved in Firefox versions lower than 25.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

For Firefox versions previous to 29.0:

  1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
  2. Click the "Reset Firefox"Button reset button.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

For Firefox 29.0 and above:

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu, click help Help-29 and select Troubleshooting Information.Now, a new tab containing your troubleshooting information should open.
  2. At the top right corner of the page, you should see a button that says "Reset Firefox"Button reset. Click on it.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

more options

IonMonkey: Crash reloading in PDF.js ? ! ? !

more options

Right now, we want to find the cause of the crashes. If something is not working properly after you turn something on / off, let it go for now.

more options

Hello, This is in response to the "escalate" tag. I understand that Firefox is crashing in Safe mode, when javascript is disabled Yahoo mail is not functioning as expected, as well as it is crashing with a high memory usage. I understand you have tried disabling addons, javascript and extensions and have tried to disable basejit. The page not found is due to the report either not being processed by the crash stat server yet or something went wrong.

The most recent crash that you posted is related to a long standing top crasher that is currently wontfix for versions 17-31, but version 32 is reported to be affected. Bug 719114.

It was also reported that Flashblock add-on was causing this for another user, but this may not apply to you because you do not have this add on.

It also appears to be using 80% of memory when it crashes. Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix And it goes up when you have it in safe mode, 95% system usage when you have jit disabled and it is in safe mode.

Did you find any malware? There are some processes that were running before the crash that are associated with malware issues. CCleaner may be a last resort.

more options

I just thought I would comment on the Wontfix markings.

Often the position is not that the situation is being ignored and not being fixed it is often more likley that there is not yet identifiable action that will fix the issue.

Yes sometimes there may be a decision a particular Bug; an enhancement for instance will not be proceeded with.

Often it is more of an administrative marking.

  • Wontfix Fx nn may just be because it is running out of time, any fix will then have to be in Fxn+1
  • Sometimes it is because the bug is not fixable it is actually a tracker or covers multiple issues.

Now looking at one of the long running bugs bug 719114 it looks rather as if no one has managed obtain proper Steps To Reproduce despite its associated signature currently being number 3 topcrasher on Fx31 (It's even crashing intermittently in tests with a similar signature Bug 941491)

Sorry I can't offer useful suggestions. At the moment just posting because it is an interesting case to follow.

more options

n0diamond Ina prior message, you said you changed this one: javascript.enabled;false but Now Yahoo Mail doesn't work. I'll re-enable JavaScript again.

javascript is needed for many sites. But at this time, it's interfering with out attempts to learn the cause of your problem.

Please follow these instructions;

about:config; Set javascript.enabled to false Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} Type about:crashes in the address bar. If there are reports that do not have BP in front of the numbers, click it and select Submit. Do this for ALL reports for the last two weeks. Once you are done, copy the page information; crash number / date / time. In the reply box, paste that information.

more options

After you have done the above, and still in safe mode, cruise the web, Don't worry about Java not running for now. Are there any other problems? After you can turn Java back on if you want.

more options

I obeyed instructions by Debapriya Bhattacharya to reset Firefox. I held down the keyboard's shift key and when Firefox restarted I told it to use safe mode. Now I have to decide whether to reopen around 50 tabs in Firefox again.

Doing this debugging on my home PC, I don't have time to use my home PC on working days. Today is a working day Wednesday but I'm home because I'm as healthy as Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. Last Sunday after the latest Firefox crash mentioned above, I installed Chrome and have around 40 tabs open in Chrome. Since Chrome assigns a separate Windows process to each tab, I could see that one tab is using 600MB of memory and another tab is using 200MB; the rest look more reasonable. So that's why Firefox's process went up to 2GB. Now Chrome with its separate processes doesn't crash on out-of-memory, but the entire Windows session drags to a crawl and I couldn't even open 50 tabs, which is why Chrome only has around 40 tabs open now.

The next step should be to close Chrome and reopen 50 tabs in Firefox again, but I don't really think it will help. Firefox has a known bug open in handling JavaScript, and it's a WONTFIX, but we know that Firefox crashes less often in safe mode than in ordinary mode. We know that Yahoo mail and some other pages require JavaScript, so I'm not going to disable it again, I just have to decide if it's more efficient to recover from Firefox crashes than to wait and wait and wait for Chrome to handle its tabs. Today I don't think Firefox is going to be stressed to its crashing point.

However, at work I'm still using Firefox, now in safe mode, and probably tomorrow I can do a reset and reopen in safe mode again, so I'll still be able to make further reports to some extent.

more options

"Crash reloading in PDF.js"

That wouldn't surprise me. A combination of memory stress (2GB virtual address space), known JavaScript bug, and not knowing if Firefox has problems with PDFs but we sure know that Adobe has problems ^_^

more options

You can check the memory usage in Firefox on the about:memory page.

more options

"It was also reported that Flashblock add-on was causing this for another user, but this may not apply to you because you do not have this add on."

True. Youtube and a few other sites need Flash. Adobe fixes problems in Flash, very frequently.

"It also appears to be using 80% of memory when it crashes"

Yes, after installing Chrome I think I can see that two sites seem to be pretty antisocial, one tab taking 600MB and one taking 200MB. But still, I think this shouldn't be a reason to crash. My hard drives have lots of space for paging files.

"Firefox uses too much memory (RAM) - How to fix"

Yeah, open fewer tabs. Zero is best, right? Occasionally I make lists (memos) of various pages that I have open for various reasons, and then close the tabs. But while working on some problem or other, or reading some news article or other, and clicking on links to view related information, it's not so rare to get 50 tabs open.

"And it goes up when you have it in safe mode, 95% system usage when you have jit disabled and it is in safe mode."

Yes, it looks like Firefox is indeed more stable in safe mode, crashing less often though still not zero. In normal mode it crashes earlier, even when its process only occupies 1.6GB of virtual address space.

"Did you find any malware? There are some processes that were running before the crash that are associated with malware issues."

Can you say which processes those are? Some people regard Hewlett Packard printer drivers as malware, which isn't entirely false, but I need them in order to print. Historically some people have opined that Windows users should disable the ability to input text in Japanese or various other stuff that we have to do in daily life, but I haven't noticed that kind of nonsense in recent years. What looks suspicious about my processes?

But coincidentally I did notice something. Avira had a program update at work that I didn't notice at home, and at work it added a JavaScript file that Avira executes to inspect web pages. As beneficial as it should be to have such a watchdog, it was making Firefox virtually unusable. Every few seconds a message appeared about non-responsive scripts, it was Avira's script, and I couldn't get anything done. Safe mode disabled that script, so I don't get the benefit of Avira's latest effort, but Firefox survives longer without crashing.

I can't promise that I don't have malware. For example Yahoo and other sites sell space for advertisements on their pages, and the advertisements could contain malicious scripts or drive-by downloads. I'm aware that antivirus programs are only around 30% effective. I just do the best I can do. So, which processes look suspicious?

more options

"Please follow these instructions; about:config; Set javascript.enabled to false"

I did that temporarily. I guess I can have the idea of disabling JavaScript in Firefox but enabling it in Chrome to use Yahoo mail and other sites that need it. But I have a feeling that it won't solve the problem because JIT seems to be part of the problem (Firefox lives longer without JIT, reaching a larger amount of memory bloat before crashing), and plain old JavaScript seems to be part of the problem.

"Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}"

I'm doing that all the time now.

"Type about:crashes in the address bar. If there are reports that do not have BP in front of the numbers, click it and select Submit. Do this for ALL reports for the last two weeks."

Will do.

more options

"Don't worry about Java not running for now."

I don't worry about Java not running. When I become aware of a new update from Oracle I update it, but Firefox is set to ask before activating Java and it has never asked me.

JavaScript is another matter. Whether or not you want me worrying about whether JavaScript is running, I do want to use Yahoo mail and probably a few other sites. I don't worry about JIT not running.

more options

"Type about:crashes in the address bar."

Oh neat. I forgot that I've been typing today's series of answers into Chrome, so Chrome showed me three crashes. One of them was today and I didn't even notice.

In a minute I'll do it in Firefox.

more options

One dump includes these:

0 ntdll.dll NtWaitForMultipleObjects 1 KERNELBASE.dll WaitForMultipleObjectsEx 2 kernel32.dll WaitForMultipleObjectsExImplementation 3 user32.dll RealMsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx 4 user32.dll MsgWaitForMultipleObjects

RealMsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx ? Is someone paging Raymond Chen, or is he paged out? ^_^

Anyway I think Flash was updated since that one occurred.

Several dumps have hangs in CreateProcess. I wonder if the Windows kernel is stressed out by the memory usage of two of my tabs. I'd have thought 64-bit Windows 7 should be able to contend with it though, I have lots of disk space available for paging.

more options

It looks like Firefox 32-bit is compiled with an option declaring large address space awareness, so Windows 7 64-bit allows the process's user mode virtual address space to grow to 4GB.

A few days ago I upgraded my office computer from 4GB of real RAM to 12GB of real RAM. Total usage of all processes has peaked at around 60% of 12GB, where it used to be 95% of 4GB. Also Windows itself is a lot snappier since it needs less paging. It looks like this was a good move.

Firefox 32-bit, version 31, running in safe mode, was able to reach 3.5GB of virtual memory usage before crashing. I wonder why it couldn't reach 4GB.

It crashed twice. The first time it sent a crash report. The second time it said it couldn't send a crash report because the application didn't specify a server where to send the crash report. To the best of my knowledge I did not change Firefox or extensions or plug-ins between those two executions.

My home PC is older. I've read that it can be upgraded from 4GB to 6GB, but it's not cost-effective so I haven't decided whether to try.

more options

Maybe time to consider a few basics.

Ideally Firefox should not be leaking memory. If that is happening something is wrong and needs troubleshooting.

I imagine part of the issue with crashing before using 100% 4GB is something analogous to trying to use 100% of a hdd on a Windows OS. With a hdd it works best with at least 20% free space, and fragmentation problems arise.

Firefox should be able to function pretty well on 2GB of memory. I know as not all that long ago I ran Fxon machines with under 1Gb total RAM. At present I have a single laptop that should have 4GB but apparently has a dodgy chip and runs on 2GB at present but I don't get out of memory crashes even with active extensions and over 100 tabs open.

Test fx out in a clean additional profile, all plugins disabled and browse only one or two named sites. Does any memory leak disapear ?

By that I mean

  • Memory usage as shown by Task Manger does not keep rising it hits some sensible level and does not exceed that. (Maybe never exceeds 1GB)
  • You check in about:memory and see similar results. About:memory is much more specific, and the results much more useful (at least to developers).
  • if you do see issues with the sort of use I described it may be applicable to file a bug and get developers involved.
    • Sorry it is pointless trying to file bugs along the lines of. In everyday use with dozens of sites & addons with hundreds of open tabs Firefox memory increases.
    • Or current Firefox is faulty, previous version was great. (Unless Testcase & STR then we can do that)
more options

On the machines where Firefox crashes, I installed Firefox just a few weeks ago, hoping it would be more usable than Internet Explorer 10. When I installed Firefox, the installer hanged when trying to import history, and its hang interfered with Outlook 2003. I would say that I started with a clean profile except that importing history must have done something bad. Windows 7 doesn't have Outlook Express but in Windows XP Outlook Express shared its history with IE.

Internet Explorer 11 causes Outlook 2003 to lose edits in e-mail messages so I uninstalled IE 11. IE 10 was usable for a while but gradually got worse, thrashing the page file so that all Windows applications were slow, sometimes Windows couldn't fully resume from hibernation, sometimes Windows Task Manager couldn't even redraw its menu bar within 3 seconds and couldn't draw the list of tasks before starting over on its menu bar again.

Chrome became as bad as IE 10, but then today it sucked worse. I had set its option for start-up to resume where it had left off, same as a Firefox option that I set. Today I changed a driver and had to reboot Windows. Chrome reopened half my tabs and lost half. There was a discussion in Chrome's help community from 2008 to 2014, which got closed and then a new discussion started. This bug has not changed in 6 years.

When 2 of Chrome's processes were using lots of memory, I think those 2 were not associated with individual tabs or sites. Even after all of Chrome's windows closed, a few straggling processes still lingered for a while before closing. I think the memory bloat was not due to particular sites after all.

So I'm back on Firefox at home too now. When it crashes it does remember its tabs.

If I only browse 1 or 2 sites I don't think there's going to be a problem. In fact with about 30 tabs I don't have trouble. Memory usage seems to be proportional to the number of tabs. If Flash or JavaScript has a memory leak, it's going to be proportional to the number of tabs that use Flash or JavaScript (which sadly is most of them now).

about:memory shows that windows-objects are 60% of Firefox's total memory usage.

more options
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3