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Using clear private data on exit

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RichA
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Last seen: 13 years 1 month ago
Joined: 2007-01-17 09:01
Using clear private data on exit

I use to experience this on 2x of FF Portable, and it is still there (albeit more so) in FF3.
Anyway, I have FF set to clear private data on exit, but about 50% of the time, after the Clear Private Data dialog box appears after closing the browser; and I choose "clear private data", the window just sits there for about 30 sec., it will eventually close, but after re-opening the browser, the clear private data window will appear like I ended task on FF Portable (which I hadn't), and FF actually didn't clear anything. After then choosing clear private data FF Portable will open.
BTW, I did disable session restore upon install. I have a feeling this might be speed related, but if anyone knows of anything else (since this also happened occasionally on FF2) that might be causing this, I would appreciate the help.

Thanks.

haustin
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Last seen: 13 years 3 months ago
Joined: 2007-09-19 17:59
curious...

When you "re-open" the browser, do you get the Firefox Portable splash screen? If not (and you don't have the splash screen disabled), it seems that firefox.exe hasn't really gone away when the Clear Private Data window disappears. In that case, running FFP again will cause it to attach to the still-running firefox.exe instead of launching another standalone copy. That could explain the window reappearing (the attaching process "woke up" the sleeping browser). It probably was busily deleting stuff but simply didn't finish before you woke it up.

You can pretty easily verify if something like this is happening:

  1. Run Firefox Portable.
  2. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del or right-click on an empty space in the task bar to run Task Manager.
  3. In Task Manager, click on the Processes tab and on the Image Name column header to sort the processes in alphabetical order.
  4. Find and click firefox.exe, moving the highlight bar to that line.
  5. Exit the browser as usual.

The highlighted firefox.exe line will disappear from Task Manager when the browser actually exits (followed shortly thereafter by FirefoxPortable.exe). If you launch a new firefox.exe, it won't be highlighted (the only process to get highlighted is the specific one you previously clicked). As a matter of fact, if you launch a new firefox.exe while the old one still exists, the new one will appear in the list just long enough to hand off its opening request to the existing one.

If you're unconvinced from the simple highlighting method, you can turn on the PID (Process Identifier) column — PIDs are guaranteed unique over a much longer period of time than this test requires.

Please post results!  -hea

P.S. You can also turn off the Ask me before clearing private data option to remove the user interface anomaly.

RichA
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Last seen: 13 years 1 month ago
Joined: 2007-01-17 09:01
clear saved data on exit

Thanks for the reply. I do get the splash screen before the clear box reappears. Also, the session has ended, there is no lingering session; on a couple of occasions, I have closed FF Portable and cleared data on a work PC, then came home to my personal PC (both WinXP), and if I start a session of FF Portable from the same UFD, I get the splash screen followed by the clear data window before the browser opens.

haustin
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Last seen: 13 years 3 months ago
Joined: 2007-09-19 17:59
Hmmm.

Well then, I'm at a loss.  Sad

That's very peculiar behavior, indeed. My only remaining suggestion is the P.S. from my previous comment, to see if removing the UI component prevents whatever race condition would appear to be happening.

Good luck.  -hea

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