The three most recent of those crash reports are "out of memory" problems. It could be related to the media. I'm not sure it's worth an extensive investigation at this point unless it recurs with the changes you've made.

You wrote, "The three most recent of those crash reports are "out of memory" problems. It could be related to the media." I do not understand what you wrote. What is an "out of memory" problem, and what can cause it? And what is "related to the media"? I believe (but have no definite proof) that some of my 10 crashes last Sunday were due to the wwl.com web site. If this is the case, then there is something at that URL that Firefox does not like, and I would like to find out what. I have written to that site's webmaster, but I have not yet deceived a reply.

I tried IE11 on that URL and the page loads, but the activity icon is still spinning, as what happened with Firefox. But IE11 complained about a long-running script, and the web page told me (incorrectly) that my browser was old and needed updating). I do not use IE11 except for testing, as I have had problems in the past with IE.

--Barry Finkel

Back to my original problem. In diagnosing another Firefox problem (which I soon will post on this support forum), I have found this. There are two parts to my original problem- 1) a tab I have closed re-appears on restart, and 2) a page I have changed to a different URL goes back to the original URL upon restart.

1) I think that the problem is terminology. "Restore previous session" does not mean "restore the exact setup as before". I believe it means "restore the setup as before, but KEEP the current tab in the one-tab-one-window session. In my sesssionstore.js file, the window in which the closed tab re-appears is the first window in that file. And the one-tab-one-window that appears at startup is my home page. When I "restore the previous session", the other tabs in the first stored window are added to this initial window, and the other windows contain what is in the sessionstore.js file. Whether this action is desired, I cannot say for sure. Some people might like this, and some might not. But since I know why this home page is re-appearing, I can easily delete it on restart.

I do not know if there is a way to tell Firefox to "restore the previous session" automatically upon startup without starting a one-window-one-page home page and then have me click "restore previous session".

2) About a changed window re-appearing on startup - I looked at some of the sessionstore.{js,bak} files I saved while doing tests. At 21:39 last night I changed the URL in one window to a different URL. I checked the resulting sessionstore.js file. EVERY .js file up to a restart today at 16:24 does not have the changed URL. Other URLs that I open in new tabs appear in the sessionstore.js file. I have not tried to change other URLs in a different window to see if they are changed in sessionstore.js.

Summary:

    I delete a tab ==> sessionstore.js is changed.
    I add a tab ==> sessionstore.js is changed
    I change a tab ==> in one case sessionstore.js is NOT changed.

I will try changing other tabs in other windows.

--Barry Finkel

Hi Barry, by media I did mean the streaming media from the radio station site. Perhaps there was a problem with buffering it or with a media-related extension. Troubleshooting "out of memory" problems is somewhat beyond my expertise, particularly if you can re-create them with extensions disabled (in Firefox's Safe Mode).

On your #1 about starting Firefox with the home page, I think when I restore a previous session, if I am viewing a home page that I have not navigated, then it is closed automatically. If you compare the URL in the address bar of your home page and in the Options dialog, are they identical? If there is any discrepancy, then I think the tab stays open.

To start directly in your earlier session without loading your home page, you can change your startup option. See: Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings. There is a significant difference, however: when you turn on automatic resumption of your previous session, Firefox preserves session cookies for secure sites. If you don't want those preserved (i.e., you would need to log back in to those sites), there is a preference you can change in about:config called browser.sessionstore.privacy_level (0=all sites, 1=non-HTTPS sites).

I have changed my startup option from home page to previous session. I had forgotten about that option, as I have never reviewed in detail the various settings I can use.

As for streaming on that wwl.com radio stations website, - the page has static content (except for ads), and the page invokes scripts from another site to do some work. I know very little about how HTML works. I could see on the source for that page the calls to the other site to retrieve the scripts. I have no idea what was happening; Firefox might have been continually going to the external site to retrieve the scripts.

I have been unable to reproduce the problem with the re-appearing URL in the one tab.. I have tried to change a URL in another tab and then restart Firefox; but the changed URL appears. I will try to figure out what other tests I can perform, ir determine what is unique about that URL or tab.

As for the re-appearing home page - i am convinced that Firefox was restarting with my home page and then restoring the previous session by adding that already displaying home page to the first window in my saved session. I do not know what might happen if I had only one window in my saved session. It probably is not worth testing, as I have now told Firefox to restore the previous session automatically upon startup.

--Barry Finkel

I changed my preferences so that Firefox starts my previous session at restart time. This cured the problem of the added home page that I had to delete each time. As for the changed tab that does not save - I am trying to think of a way to run tests and get more diagnostics. My simple tests with other tabs could not reproduce the problem. Someone suggested editing the sessionstore.js file to change that URL to a non-existent URL so that when that tab opens, the PDF file there will not automatically download again. But since that file is not a text file with crlf terminators, I am not sure how I can edit that file without corrupting it.

--Barry Finkel

I agree: not safe to try to edit sessionstore.js manually due to the difficult-to-read data structure.