[Solved] Palemoon instability since v19

[drivetheory]

I understand it's frustrating, but there has to be a reason that this occurs on your system. How quickly after dragging and dropping are you closing the browser session? Almost immediately? What if you drag and drop it to a regular folder instead of your desktop?

EDIT: since it's irregular, have you more extensively tested this with Firefox as well or not?

EDIT2: Did you make sure not to use any add-ons or plugins when testing?

the only frustration i have with any of this is my own ignorance of programming and my resulting inablity to resolve this problem myself, for this i sincerely apologize to you all. I am very grateful for all the troubleshooting ideas and help.

usually i drag-n-drop the shortcut, then close a couple seconds later, however long it takes to agree to overwriting the existing shortcut then moving the mouse to the X.

have not "extensively" tested this with firefox, but also never had this problem with firefox. (firefox always got sluggish when opened for too long and memory usage increased- thus prompting my switch to waterfox and then to palemoon 1.x years ago). i'll start testing this with firefox, but then i also wonder about the 32-bit/64-bit environment differences?

before posting on Jul 30, 2013 i had pretty thoroughly tested this problem by systematically removing installed addons 1 at a time (for about a week straight) until the problem went away or until i had disabled all the addons. when i finally got to the point where every single addon was disabled and palemoon hung for the first time with all addons disabled that is when i posted what i did on Jul 30, 2013.

[drivetheory]

just ran palemoon.exe -safe-mode.
checkmarked the box to disable addons, clicked restart button.
palemoon opened. saw addons were disabled, closed palemoon.
re-opened palemoon normally, dragged and dropped favicon from address bar to desktop (happen to be for homepage bing, which i like cause the background changes daily and sometimes they're even animated like a day or 2 ago) no need to overwrite cause there was no existing shortcut
closed palemoon
re-opened palemoon, nope, hung.
looked at procexp, lol, yup, there it is...

[drivetheory]

Someone else might have information on this WOW64, I am running the 64-bit version and it doesn't show up on my Task Manager.

WOW64 is what allows you to run 32-bit apps in 64-bit windows...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

[megaman]

I have tested your instructions and nothing happens regarding to hang.
I will get the 32-bit version to test, I am currently running 20.3 X64, so things would have changed.

Edit: I am probably not doing it right, as you do, but no hangs on the 32-bit either.
Also, no WOW64 on my Task Manager.

[drivetheory]

i just got Firefox 23 (x86) to hang the same way palemoon 20.2.1 (x64) does, using the same method of drag n drop url to desktop

I have tested your instructions and nothing happens regarding to hang.
I will get the 32-bit version to test, I am currently running 20.3 X64, so things would have changed.

Edit: I am probably not doing it right, as you do, but no hangs on the 32-bit either.
Also, no WOW64 on my Task Manager.

you wouldn't see it in your task manager.
the place you'd see an explicit "WOW64" is %windir%\SysWOW64"
but i digress as it doesn't seem to be related in this case.

also, you probably won't get a hang since the problem is only happening on my PC, lol, im special like that in this particular instance

[megaman]

i just got Firefox 23 (x86) to hang the same way palemoon 20.2.1 (x64) does, using the same method of drag n drop url to desktop
also, you probably won't get a hang since the problem is only happening on my PC, lol, im special like that in this particular instance

Okay, so it is not only Palemoon, from here you need to report to the Mozilla team so they can fix it on their end.
I tested it, and since nothing like what you come across occurred, or many others that have tested in that matter, you have to start testing programs that are currently running on your system. Majority of the time it is a security program.

[drivetheory]

Majority of the time it is a security program.

and this time it's not, which makes it all the more fun & exciting...

EDIT:
ran nirsoft shellexview, disabled all non microsoft shell extensions. (about 20)
testing with firefox.exe
will repost with results after process of elimination

EDIT 2:
rebooted system, shell extensions remained disabled (as expected)
drap n drop url tested firefox.exe
firefox hung after a 1/2 dozen tests...
attached shellexview screenshot of disabled extensions for the curious (even though disabling such didn't solve the problem)

[Moonchild]

wouldn't booting into safe mode be redundant? that just removes almost all other 3rd party apps from running which, if palemoon does run without problems still doesn't tell us anything we don't already know- that a 3rd party app and palemoon are not getting along?

No, it wouldn't. You seem to be adamant that it is a problem with Pale Moon but this kind of problem is almost always caused by other software. If the problem still occurs when you have booted into W

I checked your process monitor log and the shutdown there looks clean. Regular saving of prefs and all that, nothing out of order.
Although there's a LOT of chatter to the registry as well further up which I'm not sure should be happening... but it all depends on what you were doing as well.

Try using the 32-bit version, see if that helps. I know some 64-bit implementations of system software can be iffy, and it may be a potential cause.

[Moonchild]

If Firefox displays the same problem then definitely make this a bugzilla bug (post the bug from Firefox so they get the FF identifier) and let me know the bug number. 64-bit/32-bit will not be the issue then since FF is 32-bit.

[drivetheory]

You seem to be adamant that it is a problem with Pale Moon but this kind of problem is almost always caused by other software.

it's not that I'm adamant about it being a problem with pale moon, it's just that it's a problem that only seemed to affect pale moon (and firefox as well now that i've tested it)... still to this day I've never had this type problems with Opera (x64) or Chrome (x86), one of which (chrome) I have added plethora of addons and tweaks to and both of which i use on a daily basis as well. my apologies if i came off that way.

on a hunch i've terminated 1 pair of running processes, and re-enabled all shell extensions.

i have yet to have firefox or pale moon hang.

will post back after more testing

[drivetheory]

I'm pretty certain I've identified the problem.

Logitech Setpoint is interfering with firefox/pale moon.

i also figured out a way to reproduce the behavior 100% everytime.

EDIT:
posted as recommended
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903170
be sure to checkout the Problem Steps Recorder MHT file inside the 7z attachment

[Moonchild]

Thanks - I've added myself to the CC of that bug to see if it's something that can be worked around in the Mozilla code base.

[Blacklab]

@drivetheory: Just a thought - have you tried reverting to an older version of Logitech Setpoint? I note you using version 6.60.170.0 - do you need all of the bloated features?

I only need Logitech Setpoint to drive the scroll wheel tilt & middle click functions on an M305 wireless mouse and find that an older version (v6.32.20.0 in my case) is perfectly satisfactory, smaller (if you can ever call 39MB for mouse driver "small" ) and much more stable/bug free than later versions.

(A limited choice on oldversions.com with a more complete listing on Logitech's site. More links in Support board threads e.g. http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and- ... -p/1071373 - along with some "firefox crash" reports e.g. http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and- ... 127#M50131)

[drivetheory]

and incase you saw the screenshot of firefox addons with the setpoint being disabled @ bugzilla, no such extension or addon is seen by pale moon (x64) since it's probably a 32-bit addon, haven't looked further into it.
screenshot attached.

@drivetheory: Just a thought - have you tried reverting to an older version of Logitech Setpoint? I note you using version 6.60.170.0 - do you need all of the bloated features?

heh, bloat is truly an understatement. i will look into older versions (still run an old version of opera, since opera is now pretty much chrome with different make-up), haven't gone further into investigating this as of yet. with any luck older versions of the software will still give me the custom function keys and mouse buttons. thanks for the suggetions

[drivetheory]

A limited choice on oldversions.com with a more complete listing on Logitech's site. More links in Support board threads e.g. http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and- ... -p/1071373 - along with some "firefox crash" reports e.g. http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Mice-and- ... 127#M50131)

@Blacklab try this url on for size, good for future use
ftp://ftp.logitech.com/pub/techsupport/mouse



@everyone
I rolled back to setpoint 6.32.7 (x64) and will see if the problem is solved [EDIT]
fwiw i have reported this issue to logitech and gave them the link to the correlating bugzilla page

[drivetheory]

not a single problem since rolling back to setpoint 6.32.7 (x64)...

[Moonchild]

Thanks for the update.

I'll mark this solved then, since it's obviously a third party issue and not a Pale Moon issue.

[drivetheory]

Logitech responded:

Response Via Email (Jonar Alegre)

This is Jay-R from The Logitech Customer Care Team and I am glad to assist you.
I’m sorry to hear that your Logitech is causing your Firefox to hang. Let me help you with this.

About your inquiry, I would like to inform you that this incident happened when Firefox created a software update for their browser. It is a known issue since then. Currently, Logitech Team is now studying on this case but the real issue here lies on Firefox browser. The only way to prevent this issue from happening is to avoid using Firefox and Setpoint at the same time.

With our aim to improve and provide you with great products and customer service, a survey will be sent to you and we would appreciate if you could provide us with your comments and suggestions.
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to visit our website at http://www.logitech.com, or reply to this e-mail.

Thank you for choosing Logitech.

Sincerely,

Jay-R
Logitech Customer Support
http://www.Logitech.com/support

In United States 646-454-3200
In Canada 866-934-5644
Business Hours:
6:00AM 6:00PM PST Monday-Friday

[Blacklab]

The only way to prevent this issue from happening is to avoid using Firefox and Setpoint at the same time.

For a company best known for it's mice and keyboards that's a pretty pathetic reply! At the very least they could have suggested reverting to an earlier version of Setpoint? Their own Support forum topics show this is frequently successful!

I was shocked by the bloated size of Logitech's Setpoint - 25MB+ to enable 3 extra mouse functions (scroll wheel tilt left/right and middle click). There are some lightweight FOSS mouse drivers available - anyone found/using a good one?