Disable/Enable Crash Protection In Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6
By on July 7th, 2010

Mozilla has introduced a new feature called "Crash Protection" in Firefox 3.6 and . Crash Protection runs using Out-of-process-plugins, which basically runs the plugins as separate processes from the main Firefox process. This allows Mozilla to recover from plugin crashes without freezing the entire browser.

However, not many users like this new feature and one of commentators recently asked whether it was possible to disable crash protection because it froze the browser. Well the answer is that, yes you can disable crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6, however, you will have to do so manually.

How To Disable Crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6

Step 1: In the browser location bar type "about:config" without the quotes and hit enter or return key.

Step 2: If you are doing this for the first time, you will see a warning saying "You may void your warranty!", you need to press the button "I’ll be careful, I promise" to move to the configuration for Firefox.

disable_firefox_crash_protection[4]

Step 3: Once you have clicked the button you will see a lot of strings out there which might not make any sense. Don’t worry about it. In the "Filter" textbox type "plugins" without the quotes and hit enter. The process is slightly different for Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4, follow the appropriate steps given below.

toggle_crash_protection

Once you perform the search, right click on the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled string and click "Toggle", you only have to do this if the value for the string is true, if it is false, the Crash Protection is already disabled.

With Firefox 3.6 you will also need to disable Crash protection for Individual items. If you want to disable Crash protection for Individual items, you can use the following mapping and toggle the respective values to false.

  • dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll (Microsoft Silverlight)
  • dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll (Apple QuickTime)
  • dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (Adobe Flash)
  • dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll (NPAPI test plugin)

That’s about it, using the above steps you can disable or enable Crash protection in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4. Firefox 4 does not have options to individually turn the plugins Crash Protection off yet, but it may be added in the final version.

Tags: , , , ,
Author: Keith Dsouza Google Profile for Keith Dsouza
I am the editor-in-chief and owner of Techie Buzz. I love coding and have contributed to several open source projects in the past. You can know more about me and my projects by visiting my Personal Website. I am also a social networking enthusiast and can be found active on twitter, you can follow Keith on twitter @keithdsouza. You can click on my name to visit my Google+ profile.

Keith Dsouza has written and can be contacted at keith@techie-buzz.com.
  • DJ

    Good to know, thanks!

  • Pingback: Weekly Browsers Recap, July 12th

  • Gabriela

    Disable the crash protection??? I've never heard such nonsence!!!! It's there to protect the browser form crashes and it works!!!

    Go on, disable it! Every time you'll watch a video or a Flash ad your browser will crash!!!! Serves you right for disabling a new feature the Mozilla people worked ages on to avoid crashes!!!!!

    • http://keithdsouza.com Keith Dsouza

      @Gabriela – This post was answering a user's question on how to do it, also I have seen more flash crashes with the Crash Protection than without it on Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4 Beta 1.

    • DJ

      Gabriela, you couldn't be more wrong. Before I did this Firefox crashed constantly. Since I disabled it, it doesn't crash at all. When this was happening, I saw that A LOT of people were having this same problem and this solved it.

  • sidz

    Cheers Keith,

    I'd been finding the default timeout of 45 seconds way too long whenever flash crapped out on me. Following your steps of how to find the options, I left all IPCs enabled, but dropped the timeout to 5 secs…. that now makes my firefox experience a hell of a lot better. Much better than reverting flash to an older version which was my previous choice.

    Gabriela, get off your highhorse! Instead of ranting, why don't you offer solutions instead. Yes, the CP does work, but in my case the default value of 45 seconds was causing more problems than it was worth. The browser would freeze for the entire time, during which I could not select tabs, history or anything… Keith's directions helped me find the option (not his intention, but it has helped) which has now made significant improvements to how I view the current version of FF.

    I would prefer flash didn't crash at all but thems the breaks…

    cheers

  • http://stehil.com Stepan

    If you are a Flash developer and you want to disable crash protection as it interferes with the debugger, a better way is described @ mozilla site: <a href="http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed&quot; rel="nofollow"&gt <a href="http://;http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed” target=”_blank”>;http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed

  • Mark

    Thank You, was getting very frustrated and then i found your website, like manna from heaven.

    A 1000 blessings!!

 
Copyright 2006-2012 Techie Buzz. All Rights Reserved. Our content may not be reproduced on other websites. Content Delivery by MaxCDN