Hi,I've been using Windows 8 since it was officially released (I hadn't played around with the previews so it was a bit of a shock), but I've really been trying to give it a go.Unfortunately I keep coming up against a number of deal breaking issues, the chief of which is that using firefox will occassionally cause Win8 to completely lock up. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work and the only way to get my laptop responsive is to hard resetit.The issue is exactly as described here for the Windows 8 preview (there are other posts on this issue on the RP and RTM candidates if you search, but I've not found anyone complainingabout the actual realeased product and this issue).Now, I do note that there are two possible fixes but niether of which I want to use. I don't want to turn off my processors low power states; I have an untrabook which is supposed to be low power in order to get a full day's battery for a reason.
SimilarlyI don't want to install hyper-v and run Win8 as a guest OS; my ultrabook is already pretty weady as it is without loosing reasources to a hypervisor (I know it wouldn't be much, but it would still be something).So, is anyone else suffering from this issue and is there anything Microsoft is doing about it?Thanks,DanP.S. There are no events in the event log, the laptop has no AV installed other than Security Essentials and the only applications installed (aside from drivers) are Office 2013, Visual Studio 2010 and firefox. Hi Daniel,Thank you for posting the question in Microsoft Community forum. I understand that Windows 8 computer freezes locks up with any other browser except Internet Explorer.In order to provide you with a quick resolution, please reply to these questions:1. What exactly do you mean when you say “causes Windows 8 to lock up”?2.
This article describes how Firefox can be configured to trust certificates in the Windows certificate store. This makes certificate management via group policy much easier in the long run. The following guidance is provided 'as is' and cannot be directly supported by Umbrella beyond what is outlined below.
Do you receive any error message or error code?You may perform clean boot and check if the issue persists. Follow these steps to place the computer in clean boot state.Step 1:a) Press the ‘Windows + R’ key on the keyboard.b) In the ‘Run’ window type ’MSCONFIG’ and click ‘Ok’.c) Click the ‘Boot’ tab and uncheck ‘Safe Boot’ option.d) On the ‘General’ tab, click to select the option ‘Selective startup’, and then click to clear the optionLoad startup items check box.e) On the ‘Services’ tab, click to select the ‘Hide all Microsoft services’ check box, and then click‘Disable all’.f) On the ‘StartUp’ tab, click ‘ Open Task Manager’. In the Task Manager windowunder startup tab, right click on each startup item which are enabled and select ‘ Disable’.f) Click ‘OK’, and then click Restart.Step 2: Enable half of the servicesa.
Follow steps 1a and 1b to start the System Configuration utility.b. Click the Services tab, and then click to select the Hide all Microsoft services check box.c. Click to select half of the check boxes in the Service list.d. Click OK, and then click Restart.Step 3: Determine whether the problem returns.If the problem still occurs, repeat step 1 and step 2. In step 2, click to clear half of the check boxes that you originally selected in theService list.If the problem does not occur, repeat step 1 and step 2. In step 2, select only half of the remaining check boxes that are cleared in theService list.
Repeat these steps until you have selected all the check boxes.If only one service is selected in the Service list, and you still experience the problem, the selected service causes the problem. Go to step 6.
If no service causes this problem, go to step 4.Step 4: Enable half of the Startup itemsIf no startup item causes this problem, a Microsoft service most likely causes the problem. To determine which Microsoft service may be causing the problem, repeat step 1 and step 2 without selecting theHide all Microsoft services check box in either step.Step 5: Determine whether the problem returnsIf the problem still occurs, repeat step 1 and step 4. In step 4, click to clear half of the check boxes that you originally selected in theStartup Item list.If the problem does not occur, repeat step 1 and step 4. In step 4, select only half of the remaining check boxes that are cleared in theStartup Item list. Repeat these steps until you have selected all the check boxes.If only one startup item is selected in the Startup Item list, and you still experience the problem, the startup item that is selected in the list is the service that is causing the problem. Go to step 6.If no startup item causes this problem, a Microsoft service most likely causes the problem.
To determine which Microsoft service may be causing the problem, repeat step 1 and step 2 without selecting theHide all Microsoft services check box in either step.Step 6: Resolve the problem.After you determine the startup item or the service that causes the problem, contact the program manufacturer to determine whether the problem can be resolved. Imran,Thank you for your replay. To address your questions:. By completely lock-up I mean the following; all windows become unresponsive. Button presses aren't registered (caps lock, num-lock etc). Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't response and Ctrl-Shift-Esc doesn't start task manager. The mouse is responsive but nothing reactsto any clicks.
The only way to return the computer to working order is to hard reset it. There are no events in the event log except for an event stating that windows did not shut down correctly.I do not believe that this issue is related to any particular service and is not a bug within firefox. The next time it occurs, I shall certainly try your suggestions to eliminate/prove this.
![Firefox lockbox desktop Firefox lockbox desktop](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125387359/968041708.png)
The conclusion I have read (and is alluded to in the thread Ilinked to) is that it is a kernel issue with how Windows 8 manages the power states for specifically Intel processors with integrated graphics; Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. As I understand it, with the advent of HTML5 browsers are now using the more advancedfeatures of an iGPU when rendering a web page. The lock-up occurs when the browser requests one of these features which has been 'put to sleep' in order to save power. The kernel is unable to activate the necessary power state and things get in a twist andthe lock up occurs.The two solutions I posted about are a work around only.The first is to disable the processors advanced C states within the BIOS (assuming that you even can). This will stop Windows putting core/parts of the processor to sleep and therefore the bug. All very well in a desktop with a fixed power supply (thoughnot particularly environmentally sound), but in a laptop working from a battery a short cut to a flat battery.
As a means to testing that you are suffering from this problem it is a very fast way to confirm it is indeed the same issue.The other solution is to run Windows 8 as a guest OS on a hypervisor, which then uses the hypervisor Kernel to manage the processor power states. You can achieve this easily without reinstalling Windows 8 by activating the hyper-v feature (though I thinkthat you need to have Win8 Pro to be able to do that). Whilst this is a solution, I am unsure of the performance impact though and also what effect there will be on the laptop having to access hardware 2nd hand as it were. I'm not willing to test at this pointbut given the option of rolling back to Windows 7 vs the hyper-v option, I will select the latter first in order to minimise the disruption.Honestly though I would have hoped that given the number of people affected by this issue during the release preview that Microsoft would have addressed it.
It would be nice to know if there is a hotfix or a patch in the workings. Or if there was a patchreleased, then I'd like to suggest that it hasn't been successful.Dan. Hi jipo,I'm not having the issue any more; I performed another completely clean install of Windows 8 (and later 8.1 as I had upgrade problems).
I suspect that it was largely caused by the Intel/McAfee Anti-Theft software that was included with the laptop, which I hadn'tbothered re-installing.Essentially there were two components to the application; a disk encryption and a active always have to be online component that bricks the laptop if you didn't log in. Neither of these worked with the encryption causing all the lock-ups and the online componentcontinually failing to connect and the laptop getting locked out because of it.The last I checked it looks like McAfee have abandoned development of this software (despite selling 3 year licenses), so it isn't about to become Windows 8 compatible. If you have anything like this, I would recommend removing it from your system.With the rebuild I also manually installed all the latest drivers for everything that I could, and kept the manufacturer soft(bloat)-ware to a minimum.Sorry that I can't be more helpful, hope that you get your issue sorted though.
Image: MozillaSince the release of, have you made the change to Firefox in your company? If that's the case, are you concerned about users making changes to the browser that might go against company policy, or pose security risks? Although the average user might not know the about:config feature exists, there will be some that do. Even though completely disabling about:config isn't really an option, you can always lock down certain settings within about:config, and then deploy that newly configured browser.I'm going to walk you through the process of doing just that. I'll demonstrate on the Linux platform (using and Firefox 59).
The process is similar on both Windows and macOS, although the specifics on file locations will vary.You will need to download the latest version of from Mozilla and uninstall the version of Firefox that was included either via the default operating system installation or from with the OS package manager. You will also need to use the terminal window.
Download the latest version of Firefox into the /Downloads directory.Once you have everything ready, let's get to work. Unpacking the file. You should now see a folder named firefox.
Change into that folder with the command cd firefox.We are now ready to configure. Configuring FirefoxThe first thing we must do is create a new file called mozilla.cfg. Issue the command nano mozilla.cfg.
Within that file we're going to lock down the about:config preferences we don't want the users to be able to change. The first line of this file is always ignored, so we're going to simply add an empty comment, like so: //The next lines in the file will contain all of the configuration options.
To lock a preference in about:config, a line will start with lockPref. Let's say, for example, we want to set the default homepage to the TechRepublic site. The configuration option for this would be: lockPref('browser.startup.homepage'), 'find out what other preferences you can set in this file, all you have to do is open up the about:config page.
For example, you could lock down app.update.enabled (which would disable application updates) with this line: lockPref('app.update.enabled', false);You could also lock down the default browser check with this line: lockPref('browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser', false);Once you've added all of your configuration options, save and close that file.Next issue the command (from within the current firefox directory) nano default/pref/autoconfig.js. Within that file, add the following contents: //pref('general.config.obscurevalue', 0);pref('general.config.filename', 'mozilla.cfg');Save and close that file.
Test your configurationsOpen Firefox with the command./firefox. When the browser opens, you should be able to see your configurations in place. You can check to make sure they've been locked by opening the about:config page (enter about:config into the address bar and hit Enter). Search for one of the options you've configured and it should appear as locked ( Figure A).Figure A.
Our newly locked options.Deploying the configured FirefoxBecause this is Linux, the process is actually pretty easy. What we're going to do is move the firefox folder to /opt with the command sudo mv firefox /opt. Next we'll create a symbolic link to /usr/bin with the command ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox.
At this point, a user can issue the command firefox from the command line to start up our newly configured (and locked down) version of Firefox. Once it starts, lock the icon to the desktop panel and you're good to go. Depending upon your Desktop Environment, you might have to manually create a desktop entry. To do that, open a terminal window and issue the command nano /.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop and add the following contents: Desktop EntryVersion=1.0Name=FirefoxGenericName=FirefoxComment=FirefoxExec=/usr/bin/firefoxTerminal=falseIcon=/opt/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default48.pngType=ApplicationCategories=Network;WebBrowser;MimeType=text/html;Save and close that file. The newly created launcher should appear on your desktop or your GNOME Launcher.And that's all there is to deploying a version of Firefox that includes locked down options within about:config. If you're looking to keep your users from tampering with Firefox, this might be your best route until Firefox for Enterprise is released.