[Solved (kinda)] Firefox Web Browser-Plugin Check & Updates

[Blacklab]

Apologies in advance for yet another link linking to links, linking to links! This is a very confused problem with dozens of topics on SUMO and mozillaZine all proposing different causes, fingering different extensions/plugins, and suggesting multiple/conflicting solutions. Perhaps the best of the many threads was this (failed) attempt by a mozillaZine moderator to keep the discussion in one thread to avoid having information spread all over the forum....

Hi all,

It's October 2012 and the Plugincheck monster (Nice one! Berger-99 ) strikes again with FF v.16.0. And none of those media plugins is guilty. So I decided to rename dll's shown in about:plugins one by one and check out effects. When nothing seemd to be helpful, I decided to turn on all plugins being switched off all the time, and then check their dll's' paths in about:plugins. Well well, as you probably suppose, I found it

The "Yahoo ActiveX Plugin Bridge" is a guilty one. And no matter if switched on or off! So I have renamed it from npyaxmpb.dll to npyaxmpb.dll.OLD and this appeared to be a solution (Renaming dll instructions post is on Page 1 copied from this over optimistic "Solved" topic: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=2223725 )

I suppose that was a reason because Yahoo plugin-checking application has "blocked" status in the blocklist.xml file.

Enjoy

The thread covers the "about:config/plugins.update.url/delete the url address = blank tab" partial solution and discusses whether the root cause of problem might be a mismatch between your unique set of installed extensions/plugins and mozilla's blocklist.xml file? bug #663676 & bug #663722 are mentioned plus a way to force the blocklist.xml to reload by pasting a code into the Code bar in Error Console (Tools > Web Developer > Error Console). Quite how or why the blocklist.xml file is triggering the Plugin Check Nag page at every session start for some users still seems to be a mystery?

As I have never seen this problem I can't test this theory - but it might explain the wide variety of plugins fingered and sudden onset/reappearance of this problem?

PS. Prompting our users to update their plugins Blog by Jorge Villalobos (AMO): https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2012/10 ... r-plugins/ has many comments/complaints about this problem. As a result he has raised bug #802189 Plugin softblock makes Plugin Check open on almost every new session - which may relate to the current softblock on Java in Pale Moon 15.4? If my reading of Jorge's other replies is correct then the "Plugins Check Nag page" is actually working as Mozilla intended and any out-of-date Plugins are being picked up by the blocklist.xml file - but this should only open the Plugins Check page once at next session start.

[Bobby Sodastream]

That is a fair and true summary of the posed solutions, Blacklab. I have tried them all, bar renaming dlls.

I have switched on this morning and the Plugin check monster has failed, yup, failed to rear its nefarious head.

The reasoning for the disappearance remains unknown. For now, I am on the right side of its intermittent behaviour!

[Moonchild]

To help beating the monster down, I'll be incorporating the nsBrowserGlue fix in the upcoming point release (among a few other things). Hopefully that will help preventing the plugin-check-on-startup annoyance.

[Bobby Sodastream]

Thank you for all your hard work, Moonchild.

[chumley]

I'm wondering if this issue does have something to do with Java and it's recent blacklisting.

On my plugincheck page, There is always a notice above the list of plugins that says:
"Missing Java? For your safety Firefox has disabled your outdated version of Java. Please upgrade to the latest version".

This was happening even then the java plugin was disabled. I tried completely uninstalling java, including the deployment toolkit, so no enabled or even disabled java related extensions/plugins are showing in PM. Strangely that made no difference. The plugin check tab still opens automatically, and it still give the same message about Java. I have no idea what piece of java it is detecting, if anything.

Another machine (Win XP) which was not showing the plugin check yesterday just started today, and I don't think that one ever had java installed.

[Moonchild]

The plugin check page even shows the missing java notification if you have never installed java on that machine before. they just slap it on regardless of visitor if Java wasn't found in the browser.

[Moonchild]

I've looked more in-depth at the code for the automatic opening of the plugin check page, and it seems the cause of it opening every time is because of a too simple check in the Firefox code: as long as an outdated plugin is installed on the system (regardless of it being disabled or not), the plugin check page will be opened upon start-up.
There is no "easy fix" for this, so disabling this altogether as done in the 15.4.1 workaround for now will have to suffice.

PS: If this check still pops up after installing the update to 15.4.1 through the internal updater, download the appropriate Pale Moon installer .exe and run it; that should fix it.

[chumley]

Haven't seen the issue since the 15.4.1 update. Thank you Moonchild for your great work on PM!