Zotero is frequently crashing firefox

bct737
Here is a Report ID for errors Zotero is currently recognizing: 162228268

They all have to do with corrupt images, but they don't seem to identify any particular images.

Basically what is happening is that when I have the Zotero tab open and am working with my citations, it crashes Firefox all the time, every few minutes. I basically can't use Zotero right now because it's bogging down my work so much. I haven't been able to notice any one thing in particular that causes firefox to crash. Just now it was crashing when I performed an advanced search for a particular author's papers, and then double clicked a search result to go to that paper's entry in my library. Half the time it worked fine and went to the entry, the other half firefox froze with the search box open. But this kind of random freezing has been happening in all sorts of circumstances; editing a library item's tags, opening a PDF attached to a library item, I don't even know when else but it seems like it's all the time, every 5 minutes when I'm working with Zotero.

I've had no problems with the plugin for MS Word crashing Firefox (although it's pretty slow).
  • dstillman
    If it's freezing, not crashing, it may just be performing a large sync that you need to let finish. From the server logs that looks to be the case.

    You can tell by temporarily disabling auto-sync in the Sync pane of the Zotero preferences, or just by waiting for the sync to finish rather than killing Firefox.
  • bct737
    Well, good quetion. "Not responding" in the window title means a crash, not just freezing, right? Sometimes it says that immediately and I have to wait for firefox to restart itself or stop the program myself. But often I think it does kind of freeze up first for a few minutes and then crashes ("not responding") when I try to continue using it.

    I'll look into the sync issue and report back. The crashing problem happens every time I use Zotero...would Zotero be performing a large sync every time I open it? Or are you thinking it might be one huge sync that's never finished?
  • ajlyon
    No, not responding is something the operating system adds to the window when it can't get a response from the program. That usually means the program is busy or it has crashed. The first case is much more common.
  • dstillman
    If you kill Firefox, the sync can't finish.
  • bct737
    OK, I unchecked all of the sync boxes in the Preferences/Sync tab (no auto sync or file sync), and have been using it this way to see how it reacted; Firefox hasn't crashed once. Thanks!

    I would still like to be able to sync to the web, but am happy for now backing up my zotero library and stashing the file in Dropbox so I have it in the cloud.
  • adamsmith
    I would try syncing once, manually, with patience - i.e. leave FF alone for a while if it looks like it freezes, click continue if it gives you an unresponsive script message.
    After that you should be fine again with keeping auto-sync on.
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