Firefox crashing like crazy

[quakerboy]

Running Win7 Home Premium, Avast and Firefox.

About 3 weeks ago, Firefox started crashing like crazy. Approximately every 5th window or tab would crash it. Tried everything I could think of. After updating Firefox and Avast it seemed to stop.

As of last night it had begun anew. Win7 home premium, fully updated. Avast 5.0 fully updated. Firefox 3.6. I scan as completely clear of any viruses. But firefox is crashing with regularity now, particularly on new pages with video(ie when I want to watch the Rachel Maddow/Glen Beck thing). And I did get one crash windows completely, restart with corrupted files to repair type dealie last night.

What are the chances I have aquired a virus that Avast is unable to see, or what else could this be?

[CK_John]

1. Did you check cache size, should be about 450 MB. No widespread problem reported with FF3.6.

Start FF in safe mode(FF safe mode not F8 safe mode) this will run without addons which I think is the problem. Also try running in another browser.

[qanda]

2. I'm running running firefox 3.5.8 and it's starting to make ie look attractive

Crashes A LOT!!!! Not sure what's going on, but it really is starting to bug me.

[Warpy]

3. Firefox 3.5.8 installed this morning and so far, so good

I've had as many as 7 tabs going and no crashes so far.

The only difference is I'm running Kaspersky AV. I wonder if the AV program might be doing it, but that's a long shot. The problem might also be a bug in 3.6 they haven't resolved yet.

I'll come back and complain if mine starts to crash.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

4. YIKES!!! You may be right...Secunia Advisory for FF 3.6 7 hours ago

http://secunia.com/advisories/38608

Mozilla Firefox Unspecified Code Execution Vulnerability
Secunia Advisory SA38608
Release Date 2010-02-18

Criticality level Highly critical
Impact System access
Where From remote

Solution Status Unpatched


Software: Mozilla Firefox 3.6.x

A vulnerability has been reported in Mozilla Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.

The vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error and can be exploited to execute arbitrary code.

The vulnerability is reported in version 3.6. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution: Do not visit untrusted websites or follow untrusted links.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

:scared: :scared: I'm posting this using Internet ExPLODEr...just updated to 3.6 last week.

[Warpy]

6. Google Chrome or Opera might work

if you're cruising porn or gamer sites where malware likes to hide.

Exploder and FF3.6 are probably a little too wide open.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

5. Looks like 3.5.8 is OK...

This also from Secunia today: http://secunia.com/secunia_research/2009-45/

Mozilla Firefox Memory Corruption Vulnerability
======================================================================
1) Affected Software

* Mozilla Firefox 3.0.15 and 3.5.4.

NOTE: Other versions may also be affected.

======================================================================
2) Severity

Rating: Highly critical
Impact: System access
Where: Remote

======================================================================
4) Description of Vulnerability

Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox,
which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's
system.

The vulnerability is caused by an error when handling out-of-memory
conditions. This can be exploited to corrupt memory and execute
arbitrary code via a specially crafted web page.

======================================================================
5) Solution

Update to version 3.0.18 or 3.5.8.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Generic comment ...

Constant crashing that is not repeatable across all systems is most often caused by extensions or plugins. Flash causes crashes, for example. Silverlight 3 can cause horrible problems.

When something suddenly stops working that worked before, the first thing you should do is determine which extension(s) most recently updated and then see if Flash updated. I, personally, have had more problems from Flash than anything. It's usually a combination of a Flash update and a site that has a poor Flash implementation.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

8. I've gotta agree with RGB

This is the usual culprit when Firefox is crashing a lot since it's been a pretty stable application over the years.

My problems have been with Java updates and haven't had a problem with Flash or Silverlight. A Java update has killed my Firefox installation twice in the last year.

I've started browsing a lot more with Google Chrome, simply because the hackers haven't had time to get at it yet.

[RoyGBiv]

9. Good eye ...

Yes, I should have mentioned Java up front.

I've only had one problem with Silverlight, and it occurred right at the beginning of the Olympics. (NBC requires Silverlight to view their online content.) During the opening ceremonies, it kept crashing. It did this on two separate systems and three operating systems. Very annoying. I don't know if it was Silverlight specifically or some malformed code at the NBC site itself. I just know that disabling Silverlight made it stop; of course the video stopped too.

OnEdit: The flash problems I have are almost always under Linux. The Adobe flash client in Linux isn't integrated as well as it is under Windows. Works fine 99% of the time, but that 1% is usually a show-stopper.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

10. I found the same problem with Silverlight on the NBC Olympics site

I think it was a server issue rather than a Silverlight issue, though. I just wonder if NBC was ill prepared for the traffic. Their coverage has been pretty average for something as important as the Olympics.

I agree about the Flash in Linux - I'd forgotten how bad it was (and it's been a couple of years since I viewed some Flash under a Linux install, and this is right at the beginning of Firefox). Adobe focuses on the Windows client and not enough on the Linux clients, even though in theory it should be easier for them to implement their client on a Linux machine (being open source) than it is on Windows (being a closed system).

[RoyGBiv]

11. It's not as bad as it was ...

The improvements in the past year or so have been noticeable. Anything prior to version 10 is a crap shoot. I had decent luck with version 9.x, but how well it worked very often depended on your graphics driver and which version of Xorg you were using *and* how the distro maintainers configured it. Talk about crap shoots. It generally worked fine when the open source drivers were being used, but of course with those there's basically no hardware accelerated 3D support. Install the binary blobs from NVidia or ATI, and things could change dramatically. In my experience, I had more problems with an ATI card/driver than with NVidia.

I mostly get along with Flash now. Some Flash games have spotty functionality with user input, which is the Xorg configuration problem, but I run across those less than I once did.

At least Youtube works now.

[quakerboy]

12. Ah.. That reminds me

That was what i updated that seemed to fix things orignally. This time I fear I made things worse to irrecoverable.

Since my original post, I downloaded malwarebytes and spybot sd. These I ran, and they found a few things. Spybot did its fixes, no problem. Malware did well on the quick scan, but the complete scan gave me a blue screen and a restart about halfway through 3 times in a row. This, combined with having a creditcard cloned and used yesterday, along with being simultaneously working on my sisters computer which is legitimately riddled with viruses, induced a state of virus paranoia. Which induced nuke it all syndrome.

I got my current computer new on halloween day, when my old one was unexpectedly removed from my posession. Brand new compaq desktop with windows 7. About a week ago, I was setting up another new computer and realized that these new ones give you the ability to make actual hard restore discs, rather than purely relying on the hd partition, which I have always found questionable. So I did. And last night I decided "If I restore to factory image, then no chance of any virus remaining or propigating".

Oops.

at 83% restored, I get a message "Recovery manager could not restore your computer using the factory image. Please contact HP support. Error code 0xe0ef0003". Tried again, same thing. Formatted the hard drive with a different utility and tried again. Same message. Called HP support where a patient but not terribly quick or helpfull indian gent named "Damian" lectured me on how only a "full version of Norton 360" would protect an HP product properly, that their trial versions wouldnt do it fully, and that "3rd party" things like avast were just not designed to fully protect HP products. All while running me through the same things that I had already done. A quick web search using my sis's newly cleaned older computer revealed that HP is less than helpfull to others with same/similar problems. Investigation of the computer shows that instead of restoring the HD to the 2 original partitions, the restoration tool was making 3 smaller partitions, and leaving the bulk of the space unallocated. I suspect my restoration discs did not burn properly.

From about an hour after the original post untill about an hour ago, the computer was a giant relatively expensive and super frustrating paperweight. My wife prevailed on me to order the restoration discs from HP, which i did, but are not sleighted to arrive for several weeks. I recently cleared out my old cd's, so I didnt even have a spare copy of xp or win2000 to get it usable in the mean time. I was able to find an older copy of redhat that someone gave me, but I never got around to trying out. Unfortunantly instalation stymied me.

As of an hour ago, I managed to burn ubuntu to a disc and installed it. I am using it now. For all that I worked tech support forever, for all that I paid my incidentals in college building systems for fellow students with more money, for all that I am the it department at my company, I have never untill this day actually installed and used Linix.

Not sure if when the discs come, I will restore to the original win7, or keep this. Probably will depend on how I like it. Actually, most likely I will restore just to make sure I can, then if I am liking this, bring it back and keep the restore discs as backup.

So.. for my next op, after I have some time to explore, what do I need to know about linix. What Antiviruses are good? Do I even need one? This open office.. can I directly use my old microsoft office files, or is taking those back to microsoft office at work going to cause me problems?

[RoyGBiv]

13. Being in IT ...

... you know that "Damian" was full of it, right? OnEdit: Well, he was half right about Norton 360. If anything could suck worse than the full version, it's the trial version.

Having been on the sales end of these things, I can see the chapter and page in the sales manual for that line he gave you about Norton 360 and Avast, etc. We had the same line at Cox for McAfee. "Trial version cannot fully ..." "Free products cannot ..." Blah.

As a related aside, I'd suggest in the future using something like Acronis True Image to make an actual, full backup of your hard drive once you have a clean install and before you do anything else to it. That kind of thing will give you the ability to restore to "factory condition" ("factory" in the case being the condition in which your system is when you make the backup) without all the hoops and obstacles.

Another aside ... kinda interesting that a co-worker was having trouble with her Sanyo laptop recently that turned it into a paperweight as well. I looked at it, gave UP trying to deal with the "hidden" restore partition, and did the same thing. Installed Ubuntu and gave it to her so she could do her school work while I acquired some restore discs. I never did restore it. She was satisfied with Ubuntu 'cause it let her get on the Internet, use a word processor, and check out Facebook and her chat rooms, which is about all she ever did with it.

As for your Linux questions, I'll attempt to answer them more fully tomorrow. I don't like to half-ass such things, and it's too late for me to think clearly on it. There are Things You Should Know before contemplating a switch, particularly about Open Office. Actually, I think I and some others posted some things about it recently that I'll try to find.

[quakerboy]

14. I appreciate any tips and need to knows

right now my biggest problem is monitors.

I just repatriated my second monitor from my sisters computer. it is smaller and mounted to the left. My main monitor is larger, and mounted to the right. Ubuntu loaded the dual monitor setup with no more difficulty than windows 7 did. But it has the bar and menus on the left hand screen, and I really need them on the right.

I could just tell it that the left screen is on the right, but then my mouse would jump from the far right to the far left, and visa versa, which would be unsettling.


On edit... Yeah. Norton 360 can bite my shiny metal ass. I have never had anything but trouble with them since 1999. Same goes for McCaffey. They cut more into my personal computers ability to function than any virus I have personally ever run across. I dont tend to frequent the more risky sites, here and youtube are about as wild and crazy as I get these days. Back in college, that was a different story. I had all the software I could avoid buying, and I reformatted my hard drives weekly just to make sure nothing ever stuck with me.

For the HP indian tech guy, we had a nice conversation about how it was midnight here and about noon and warm there. I eventually just gave up trying to reason with him and told him that I have the discs for the full version of 360 which I could install if he would just help me get the computer up and running. Which is technically true. I do have them, and I could have installed if it had been working. I wouldnt have, but he stopped trying to sell it to me after that, and stuck to having me run pointless tests that I had already done.

[RoyGBiv]

15. My (rather lengthy) response ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=242x29978

Despite the playfulness with words there, I can give specific, practical advice on specific questions if you need it. I just had a moment and felt like writing ...