this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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I've been having inconsistent crashes for awhile now where the screen will just suddenly freeze and go white, requiring a close/reopen. It's not usually an issue as it's not too frequent, but it's frustrating to have a bunch of tabs waiting to be reopened.

My issue is that I've tried to check google on how to even look up what might be causing it, and it has been very uncooperative.

first: about:crashes. It's empty. I tried to see if there's a way to turn it on. Any links I could find seemed to be outdated as they pointed to about:preferences#advanced. Which isn't present.

second: checked C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(user profile)

First I checked to see if there was just a general log, then I tried to check crashes.

in both places I tried checking, the file was in a mozlz4 format. I am unsure how it is meant to be read. It was also concerning that despite finding a crash file that matched the time of the crash, all it had was a single meaningless line

"mozLz40 8 ô{"v":1,"crashes":{},"countsByDay ðrruptDate":null}"

I'm assuming it's not meant to be opened in notepad, but the files I saw in datareporting seemed to be much more comprehensive than this.

So what I'm basically wanting to know is: How do you find out the last thing Mozilla tried to do before freezing? I can't determine if it was Mozilla or an extension doing it, and if it was an extension I can't determine which one.

The main issue is that the crash is inconsistent and mostly randomly. Even if I turn off extensions it could take hours to days before anything happens.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 9 months ago

This is fairly generic advice but check the logs. I don't know where Firefox on Windows stores its logs but it has to be somewhere.

Also make sure your system isn't corrupt. sfc /scannow If you start seeing multiple applications crash and blue screens check your RAM.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

Have you checked your hardware? Do a memory test and let it run overnight.