Strange Firefox 140.3.0 ESR problem after autoupdate

[Gruhm, Sebastian]

Hello everyone.

 

We have a strange problem after Firefox ESR 128 x86 was updated to Firefox ESR 140.3.0 x86 (Windows) via the auto-update.

 

Our 1st-level support reported that Firefox no longer works on “many” computers in one area (I don’t have exact numbers). I looked into the problem and was able to reproduce it.

 

After an average of about 45 seconds (min. 30, max. 85), Firefox stops loading pages. No message appears, you can still use the menus, and there is no crash. When you close Firefox, it takes about 30 seconds for all Firefox and Crashhelper.exe tasks to terminate.

 

If you delete the Mozilla folder under %appdata%, everything seems to work normally again.

 

If you downgrade to Firefox ESR 128 x86 and then start it with the parameter “--allow-downgrade,” Firefox works with the same profile that did not work with version 140.3.0.

 

How should I proceed, what/how can I test more thoroughly to help find the cause and fix the error?

 

Best regards

 

Sebastian

 

[Pascal Chevrel]

Hello Sebastian,

Thank you for the detailed feedback. From your description, the issue may be related to profile data after the upgrade from ESR 128 to ESR 140.3.0. 

A few checks that might help narrow it down:

- Try starting Firefox with a new profile (firefox.exe -P) to see if the problem persists.
- Run Firefox in Safe Mode (firefox.exe --safe-mode) to rule out extensions or custom settings.
- Check about:crashes for any entries around the time the browser stops loading. If crash reports were sent, I would be interested in getting links to them.
- Review whether a deployment policy or enterprise configuration could be involved, since these may behave differently across ESR versions.

If these steps don’t help, please consider filing a bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org

Regards,

Pascal Chevrel

-- 
Pascal Chevrel
Firefox Release Manager 
+ Firefox Nightly & Beta community management
Timezone: UTC+2