Firefox Windows "Vanish" & Re-appear on Restart
I am running Windows 7 Professional 32-bit and Firefox 34.0.5. I have 11Firefox windows open, as I group my browsing by topic/task. Sometimes (it happened today), I attempt to switch to a different window to work on another task. I discovered that four of my windows did not appear when I clicked on the Firefox icon in the system tray. I have been running in Firefox safe mode in order to debug problems (for which I still have open issues on this forum). I had to click on "Help - Restart Firefox with add-ons disabled" to restart Firefox. Once Firefox restarted, the windows that had vanished came back to life, and I could then switch to one of the formerly missing ones. What is happening, and how can I debug the problem when it recurs? Is there any way to switch to a "hidden/vanished" window without restarting Firefox when this happens? Thanks.
--Barry Finkel
Tất cả các câu trả lời (12)
That is interesting. I have windows 7 pro too, and tried opening 11 windows, and as far as I could tell, they all worked just fine. Is this something that happens to you a lot, or just once? Tell me if that happens again will you?
I had rebooted yesterday (12/18) at 15:35 to un-install Spybot Search and Destroy (prior to installing a newer version). At 10:56 this morning I noticed that four windows had vanished. I had not done much with FF between the reboot and when I saw the windows were missing. I have logged that this condition has required a restart of FF:
12/13 20:42
11/04 00:05
10/07 13:51
09/21 22:01
There may be others that I missed during a quick scan of my manual log. As I have no idea what is causing this, there is nothing that I can do except wait for it to occur again. When it does, I need to know what diagnostics I can capture to help debug the problem. Obviously, restarting FF will not aid in diagnosis, as a restart destroys all of the evidence.
--Barry Finkel
That must be frustrating! I'm sorry, but I wouldn't really know what kind of data they would need to debug. What might be the issue, however, is the FF might be overloaded, with 11 instances of it running, and could only run 7 of them. Also, enable hardware acceleration. That may help.
I just had the following happen: I need to reboot because there were as handful of things that did not work in Windows 7 (tracert, Windows Time service, others). I rebooted, and Firefox came up. I did not look at what windows had started, as Firefox started in regular mode, and I like it running in safe mode. I did help - restart with add-ons disabled, and Firefox restarted. When I began to use Firefox, I saw that only two of my windows had started. I again did help - restart with add-ons disabled, and then all of my ten windows started. I have no idea what is happening. I no longer see a sessionstore.js file (there is a sessionstore.bak file), so I do not know where the session configuration is now kept. And, on a related note, is there a way to change my start menu (WIn 7 Pro 32-bit) so that Firefox always starts with add-ons disabled? Thanks.
--Barry Finkel
I had a case a few minutes ago. I clicked on a hyperlink in a Thunderbird mail message, and a new tab opened in Firefox. Then Firefox crashed.
bp-98a77415-40af-4bf5-b8b8-71fa12150209
I have not looked at that crash report. I clicked "quit". Once the crash report had been sent and Firefox terminated, I restarted Firefox in safe mode. I do not see an option when FF crashes to restart in safe mode. When FF started in safe mode, the "Embarrassing" message was displayed. When I responded to the message, FF came up. I had 9 windows, but my main window was NOT THERE. I clicked "Help - Restart with add-ons disabled", and FF restarted without an "Embarrassing" message. Then FF had all of my 10 windows. What is happening? How can I diagnose this? Thanks.
--Barry Finkel
I just had another occurrence. FF crashed when I was not at the computer:
bp-6790991e-f7af-4f04-b998-e08042150215
I submitted a crash report and I quit FF. I then started FF in safe mode, and only 8 of my 10 windows started. I clicked "Help - Restart with add-ons disabled", and when FF started, it had only 7 windows. I restarted the process, and then all 10 windows started. How can I debug this condition?
--Barry Finkel
I had another occurrence yesterday. FF was running slowly and using 47% CPU. I clicked "Help - Restart with add-ons disabled", as I usually do. One hour and 20 minutes later, FF was still running. I took a dump via the taskmgr, and then I cancelled FF. i pressed the "shift" key while clicking on the FF icon in the system tray, and FF started. But, as sometimes happens, it did not start in safe mode. When FF started, it had only 9 windows. As soon as FF would let me, I clicked "Help - Restart with add-ons disabled", and FF started in safe mode with all 10 windows.
--Barry Finkel
These are OOM (out-of-memory) crashes where all available memory is used up.
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.
- Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
- Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window
I have un-ckecked "use hardware acceleration".. I will wait to see what happens.
--Barry Finkel
I had another occurrence this morning. Firefox was running slowly, using up to 40% CPU, and using 1.2Gb private. I was running in safe mode, as I do these days. I clicked "Help-restart w/o add-ons", and during the restart, Firefox crashed:
bp-b18a9ae8-d8e5-4974-82fc-24ba92150310
I have not yet looked at that dump. When Firefox ended, I used the Shift key to attempt to start Firefox in safe mode. Half of the time I try this, Firefox starts in regular mode; half the time it starts in safe mode. This time, Firefox did NOT start in safe mode. So. I clicked "Help-restart w/o add-ons", and Firefox started in safe mode. But Firefox did not have my main window, so I had to again click on "Help-restart w/o add-ons" to get the main window to start.
--Barry Finkel
This problem is still occurring. I always run Firefox with add-ons disabled. This evening at 19:42 my computer experienced a 116 TDR timeout BSOD. The computer auto-rebooted. When I logged in at 20:00, Firefox came up in regular mode (I do not know how to configure FF to start always in safe mode). So, once FF had stabilized, I clicked on Help - Start with add-ons disabled. It takes FF a long time before it will respond to my clicking the "Help" at the top of the menu bar. When FF re-started, it had only 9 windows; my main window was MISSING!. i had to re-click "Help" and restart FF again in safe mode to get all 10 windows to appear.
Is there anything I can do to debug this??? I have no idea what is happening internally in FF to cause this. I am running 39.0.1.
--Barry Finkel
I had another occurrence last night. My computer experienced a BSOD, and it rebooted. After I entered my password, Firefox started (in safe mode, as I always do these days). But Firefox did not have my "main" window, so I had to "Help - restart with add-ons disabled" to restart Firefox to get that "missing" window to display.
--Barry Finkel