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Crashing, and restored session missing some tabs that were open.

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  • 25 have this problem
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  • Last reply by mnalep

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I happen to get frequent crashes of Firefox.

It may have to do with having many tabs opens at once. (Maybe 150 or more). Is there a way you can verify if too many open tabs is causing crashes?

Then when I restart, and indicate to Firefox to do a restore, many times I will find that new tabs recently opened are not all restored.

Likewise, when I delete tabs, many times on a restore those 'deleted' tabs are 'restored' also!

I have tried to go though the tabs to delete them, thinking that fewer tabs might mean less crashes. But I have given up on that seeing that I often crash in the midst of doing deletions.

It's like a going in a circle.

I happen to get frequent crashes of Firefox. It may have to do with having many tabs opens at once. (Maybe 150 or more). Is there a way you can verify if too many open tabs is causing crashes? Then when I restart, and indicate to Firefox to do a restore, many times I will find that new tabs recently opened are not all restored. Likewise, when I delete tabs, many times on a restore those 'deleted' tabs are 'restored' also! I have tried to go though the tabs to delete them, thinking that fewer tabs might mean less crashes. But I have given up on that seeing that I often crash in the midst of doing deletions. It's like a going in a circle.

All Replies (20)

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We're sorry to hear that Firefox is crashing. In order to assist you better, please follow the steps below to provide us crash IDs to help us learn more about your crash.

  1. Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A Submitted Crash Reports list will appear, similar to the one shown below.
  2. Copy the 5 most recent Report IDs that start with bp- and paste them into your response here.

SubmittedCrashReports-Win7

Thank you for your help!

More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.

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By default, Firefox saves current session information (e.g., open and closed tabs) every 15 seconds. But if Firefox is becoming unstable, or is having trouble updating the file, that might stop working. I don't know all the ins and outs of session file updating, but if you look in your currently active Firefox profile folder and see more than a few sessionstore files, especially ones with numbers after them, it may indicate that the files are becoming locked or otherwise can't be updated normally. Those numbered files also might have your missing tabs.

Here's how to open your profile folder from inside Firefox:

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

What you would normally expect to see are:

  • sessionstore.bak
  • sessionstore.js
  • sessionstore.bak-2013... file(s) created during upgrades

Note: if you cannot see file extensions on your sessionstore files, Windows may be concealing them. To work with File names accurately, unhide them using the steps in this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/865219.

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

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the-edmeister,

Here are the last five crash id's:

bp-934bdbe2-55eb-4fe1-aae3-351172140124 1/24/2014 12:01 AM
bp-cfead66b-1e80-4ba2-8060-63d6d2140123 1/23/2014 5:11 PM
bp-ed5e1512-2e91-4e3e-89ca-3a1fe2140122 1/22/2014 6:46 PM
bp-c8053e80-2df8-4661-8964-9e92e2140122 1/22/2014 3:00 PM
bp-0513de25-9e47-4742-9e85-e284d2140122 1/22/2014 2:15 PM

Modified by cor-el

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jscher2000,

There is something not working then. I crashed last night after midnight around 12:45am. I did a restore. Several tabs were missing that I had been looking at earlier in the day, say around 4pm to 6pm Thursday(yesterday). They were not restored after that restore I did around 12:45am.

I read your comment later, around 2:00am, and looked at the sessionstore.js file - it still had a timestamp of 12:49am - easily 30 minutes prior to my restore, and several new tabs I had opened.

Now it is around 12:44 pm on Friday. I have been using Firfox for about 30 minutes, but the sessionstore.js still is time stamped at 12:49am!

I also just now (Friday 12:44pm) clicked on the file's "properties" of sessionstore.js and Windows file manager indicates it was last modified 12 hours ago.

So I think something is not running every 15 seconds to back up my tabs. (That sessionstore.js is where the backed up tabs are stored, correct?)

Is there some setting I can look at to ensure it is set to the correct time interval to perform backups? What could be stopping the saving of session information?

I did see a few sessionsore-0.js through sessionstore-6.js - but these were created months ago, some in 10-2012, 11-2012, some created in 01-2013 and 11-2013, - none in the last several months.

I submitted crash id's above as requested by edmeister.

Also, can I FORCE firefox to save my session profile? Like a command that will do it...

Modified by mnalep

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Hi Matt, to see whether your sessionstore preferences have been modified, could you visit the about:config preferences editor.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sessionstore and pause while the list is filtered

The timing of updates is determined by browser.sessionstore.interval which defaults to 15000 (15000 milliseconds = 15000/1000 = 15 seconds). If Firefox is halting frequently I sometimes recommend increasing this to 60000 (60000 milliseconds = 60000/1000 = 60 seconds).

Do you notice any non-default (bolded, "user set") settings that seem strange?

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Hi Matt, crash reports are very hard to understand, and the ones you've submitted aren't directly associated with specific bugs, which makes the troubleshooting more of a challenge.

The first report seems associated with an "out of memory" (OOM) condition, and occurred after Firefox has been "up" for over 6 hours (although you were not necessarily active during that time). Firefox has a page called about:memory with buttons you can use to reduce Firefox's use of memory. Unfortunately, OOM crashes can be unpredictable and I don't know how to recommend you go about using that tool. You could try using it every 4 hours to see whether that makes any difference.

For the second one, the involvement of fslsp.dll indicates a problem between Firefox and your F-Secure extension. Please make sure F-Secure is as up-to-date as possible, and/or consider disabling this extension. Please see this thread for past discussion on that: FireFox chrashes several times an hour.

Third and fourth reports, no insight.

Fifth report hints at a connection to SPDY, a protocol some websites use for faster communications. You can disable SPDY in about:config and see whether that helps.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste spdy and pause while the list is filtered

I haven't researched the newer preferences on this list, but I suppose it's worth trying to disable all 3:

  • network.http.spdy.enabled
  • network.http.spdy.enabled.v2
  • network.http.spdy.enabled.v3
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matt\Picutres\firefox about_config sessionstore settings.jpg link text

(I tried to put a link in to the CTRL/PRINT SCREEN image of the about:config session store variables (above) but it looks like that does not work like a normal html link (or maybe since it is on my pc - it can't work?)

I changed the sessionstore.js interval to 60000 (from 15000).

The only bolded setting that was had a status of USER SET, and was bold:

browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID 20131205075310

I wish I could manually force a 'save'.

also, I've waited about 5 minutes now (since changing to 60000), still no update to the file seesionstore.js time stamp.

Modified by mnalep

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It is best to remove all existing numbered sessionstore.js files as Firefox uses such a numbered file as a temp file while creating a new sessionstore.js file and renames this sessionstore-##.js file to sessionstore.js once has finished writing the file to disk. Firefox needs to scan the directory to find an unused number for the temp file, so if there are such numbered files present then this might possibly interfere. Also the presence of numbered files usually indicates that some security software is active with possibly locking this temp file for inspection and prevent Firefox from renaming the file.

Firefox should create a new sessionstore.js file with the startup setting "Show my windows and tabs from last time".

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Note that the 934bdbe2-55eb-4fe1-aae3-351172140124 crash report also seems to indicate a problem with the safe browsing database file (mozilla::safebrowsing::HashStore::ReadAddPrefixes(); nsUrlClassifierDBServiceWorker::ApplyUpdate()), so maybe check for issues with files in the safebrowsing folder (same location as the Cache folder, used by the disk cache, about:cache)

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I just noticed that in the directory containing profiles there is one called:

sessionstore.bak-20131205075310 <== no .js extension on file

which happens to match the value of:

browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID 20131205075310

I don't know what either of these have control of, but I was thinking, what if i deleted that file, or that session variable, or both ? Any feedback as to if I should try deleting either, or both?

(I did check my F-Secure anti-virus, it is the latest version, and the browser extension for it (Browsing Protection 1.10) is currently disabled. Probably has been disabled for a day or tow now I'm guessing is when I disabled several add-ons).

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The sessionstore.bak-20131205075310 file was probably created automatically after a restart to update Firefox (I see the same file).
There shouldn't be any need to delete this file or reset prefs prefs.


You can try to create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.

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hi cor-el,

I just deleted several sessionstore##.js files, and a few others i had made earlier by copying and pasting.

So, I have waited a few minutes, and opened some tabs, but sessionstore.js still not updated with new time stamp ...

I read on mozillazine.org about a session variable called: browser.sessionstore.enabled = True

Should I have that variable in my about:config ?

Also still not sure about deleting: sessionstore.bak-20131205075310 and browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID 20131205075310


will look at about:cache next

Modified by mnalep

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So I have about:cache open, and clicked on LIST CACHE ENTRIES, but just saw a long list of what looks like sites I've been on? Not sure what to check here?

BTW, I did not find a CACHE or OFFLINE CACHE directory in my firefox profile in File Manager. Should I have?

Also, I just noted a directory called /bookmarkbackups. The lates file was from 1-21-14 called: bookmarks-2014-01-21_37168.json. Is this ok in regards to my bookmarks being up to date, or is this not the latest bookmarks? I know I have saved lots of bookmarks 1-23-14 and 1-24-14.

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No, the browser.sessionstore.enabled pref is no longer used because you can't disable Session Restore as it is used for pinned tabs and tab groups as well. You can only disable specific features like resume from crash and undo closed tabs/windows.

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ok, thanks for verifying i dont need that browser.sessionstore.enabled = True variable.

I guess I will close firefox and open with a new profile then. I just know I will lose new tabs that I opened today in a new window. I did a save all tabs into a new bookmark folder, but what I have noticed often is that when I open those tabs the history of how I got to those pages (The arrow keys history) is lost.

I am guessing there is no way to 'force' a save to the sessionstore.js file, as you guys have not specified a way to do that?

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Hey guys,

I was just about to start a new profile session when Firefox crashed.

Guess What?

On this latest restore, the sessionsore.js file is now being updated regularly. I've checked it five times now.

Also almost every tab i had opened was restored! Only two that I had opened in the last minute did not restore. (I am going to set the sessionstore interval variable back to 15000 seconds to help with that).

I am guessing that deleting all the other sessionstore-xx.js files may have fixed the problem. I will watch the next few days, and try to remember to update this thread again with my experience.

But for now, I think this may be resolved.

Thanks to both of you for your help !

...matt

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Oops, I am mistaken...

I've been restored for about a little while after another crash.

The timestamp on sessionstore.js is 7:58pm, and it's now 8:30pm. So at least half an hour has elapsed without my current session being saved.

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Modified by cor-el

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Hi Matt, do you see any numbered sessionstore files being created?

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jscher,

No number sessionstore files.

This is the only other sessionstore, that I mentioned earlier: sessionstore.bak-2013120507531

It's 12:17 am, and no updates since 7:58 pm (5.5 hours ago).

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