Solved Firefox 28 randomly crashing for the last three days

[ThisIsMadness91]

It started on Tuesday night. I closed Firefox to run a couple of scans with Malwarebytes and Avira (both free versions), and as soon as I reopened it, it crashed and asked me if I wanted to restart it. Every day since then, it's crashed and asked about restarting. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's always happened around the same time in the evening.

I think my HTTPS-Everywhere extension was updated when I closed Firefox to start the first scan, as the Firefox Add-ons Manager said it was lasted updated on the 15th of April, and the extension's folder says it was last modified about five minutes before I started the scan. Would it be a good idea to try disabling it tomorrow and seeing if it crashes again? I know the update has brought back an old problem where Google Images gives a redirect notice when viewing a full picture (I confirmed it by using Google Images on my laptop both before and after updating the extension, and the redirect notice only started appearing after the update).

Update: Firefox crashed again today, only it was in the afternoon rather than the evening. If it helps, I'll post a screenshot of the window that opens when it crashes next time it happens. I didn't disable the extension because I didn't get a reply yet.

Update 2: Firefox didn't crash at all on Sunday, and almost went without crashing today, but crashed just a few minutes ago. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a screenshot.

 

[andrew129260]

Have you tried clicking firefox-help-restart with addons disabled?

Does the problem stay gone after having all add ons disabled?

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Not yet. Should I try it with the add-ons disabled for a few days? I thought the problem had gone away, but it happened again last night, so I'm not sure how long to try it without add-ons.

 

[Not Myself]

Standard diagnostics, a recognized place to start:

Standard diagnostic - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Thanks for the link. I'll have a read through it.

Update: I've followed the first three steps, but the problem still occurs. I think I'll go ahead and try browsing with HTTPS-Everywhere disabled this weekend. It and Adobe Flash Player were the most recently updated plugins when the crashes began, but Flash updated two days in advance whereas HTTPS updated the day the crashes began (it updated when I restarted Firefox Tuesday evening, and Firefox crashed shortly after restarting it). If the problem still occurs, I'll keep reading for more ideas.

Update 2: I'm actually going to start browsing with it disabled now. Firefox has crashed several times today.

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

It's been nearly four days since I disabled HTTPS-Everywhere, and I haven't experienced any crashes yet. If I manage to get through the rest of today and tomorrow without any crashes, I'll re-enable it either tomorrow night or Wednesday night and see if it starts crashing again.

Update: Well, identifying the cause of the crashes may not be as easy as I thought it was. Firefox stopped responding a few minutes ago. However, it wasn't quite the same problem I've been having recently. From the 15th of April (when the add-on was updated) to 24th (when I decided to disable it), when Firefox crashed, it would open the crash reporter seen in this attachment. Tonight, it simply froze then said "not responding" until I closed it, which is what I'm used to seeing when Firefox has a problem. I'll keep it disabled for tomorrow and Wednesday. If I don't have any problems, perhaps I can assume tonight's problem was just a coincidence. Otherwise, the extension isn't what's causing the crashes.

Update 2: Just a quick update as I noticed that HTTPS-Everywhere was updated two days ago. I'll stick with my current plan and keep it disabled until Thursday morning.

 

[mistermarmot]

I can confirm that there is an issue between Flash and HTTPS Everywhere that is 100% reproducible on Chromium 33 so I would suspect Firefox implementations might have the same issue.

They don't conflict on other websites but the crash is 100% at Hulu or Comedy Central until HTTPS Everywhere is shut off.

So turn on HTTPS Everywhere and then go to watch something at Hulu and see if you can make the crash 100% consistent that way.

I suspect it is in the advertisement serving technology through Flash using websites that don't support HTTPS.

We should post messages at HTTPS Everywhere's forum.

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

I may have found the culprit. There were no crashes yesterday or Tuesday, so I re-enabled it last night before going to bed, and I experienced another crash just a few minutes ago. So now I need to try and figure out what it is about HTTPS-Everywhere that's causing Firefox to crash while it's enabled. Could it have something to do with Flash like mistermarmot said? Should I try uninstalling they reinstalling HTTPS-Everywhere?

 

[mistermarmot]

What web sites?

Did you try Hulu or Comedy Central to get the crashes?

People are reporting crashes with the new Iron (Chromium) ver 34 and Flash 13 but haven't been reporting their installed extensions. Adobe's forums have a flood of crash posts also but again not a lot of specifics on website and installed extensions but they include browsers from Firefox, IE to Safari on Macs.

I might try uninstalling Flash 13 with their uninstaller : Uninstall Flash Player | Windows
and going back to 12 for now.
Here is a procedure posted for completely removing Flash and going back to a patched earlier version:http://support.muse.adobe.com/message/4487439#4487439

HTTPS Everywhere is almost critical security feature for me.

 

[mistermarmot]

There is a serious zero-day exploit (supposedly) in all Flash versions earlier than 13.0.0.206 so going backwards is a risky proposition also.

Here's the security announcement:
Adobe Security Bulletin

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Hulu videos don't seem to work outside of the US, and I haven't tried watching anything on the Comedy Central website yet. I re-enabled HTTPS-Everywhere to test them, and Firefox crashed the moment it was restarted (neither Hulu nor Comedy Central were open at the time). Rolling back to a previous version of Flash is too risky for me. For now, I'm going to keep HTTPS-Everywhere disabled and look around to see if anyone else is experiencing this problem.

 

[Layback Bear]

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere is produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many sites on the web offer some limited support for encryption over HTTPS, but make it difficult to use.

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

It's been crashing when I open pages that previously didn't cause any problems.

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Sorry for double posting but I thought this might be better off in a separate post. Firefox just crashed even though I have HTTPS-Everywhere disabled. It seems I'm back to square one.

Update: I should probably mention that I'm now using Firefox 29. I'd change the thread title, but I don't think it's possible.

 

[Layback Bear]

You will find out that when updating any browser many of the add on's are not updated to work will with the new updated browser.

 

[Sarris]

I'm a Pale Moon user. Dead Stable, no conflicts, no crashes.

Firefox gets worse at every release, (not to mention the ugly Asstralis debacle) so why not try a well massaged & performance optimized FFx fork?

They also have a x64 version. Here: The Pale Moon Project homepage

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Thanks. I'll take that into consideration.

 

[mistermarmot]

Palemoon

I highly recommend Palemoon also.
I don't use Firefox anymore, just Iron and Palemoon.

 

[A Guy]

Since you are getting the Crash Reporter when this happens, you can try and get help for this:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-crashes-troubleshoot-prevent-and-get-help

I have seen reports that HTTPS Everywhere 3.5 and 3.5.1 are causing crashes, and downgrading to v3.4.5 "solves" the problem (you would have to disable auto update for that one extension)

Tools> Addons> Extensions> Right click HTTPS Everywhere> Show more information> Auto updates to off



https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Scroll down to Recent Releases

Stable releases for Firefox (desktop):

https-everywhere-3.4.5.xpi

A Guy

 

[ThisIsMadness91]

Thanks. I may try downgrading next week. As unfortunate as it is that I don't know why HTTPS-Everywhere is crashing Firefox, it's reassuring to know I'm not the only one who's having this problem.