Firefox kills Windows Journal Writer in Fujitsu T4310 Windows 7 Tablet

I am rather shocked and annoyed to discover that Firefox 3.6.3 causes the Windows Journal Note Writer to crash in a Fujitsu T4310 Tablet PC running Windows 7. Initially I suspected it was caused by the Adobe Flash plug-in in Firefox but after many hours of painful cycles of recovery to factory settings that I have managed to nail it down to Firefox.

The machine is brand new and hence I can afford to reset it back to factory settings when things goes wrong.

For those new to Tablet technology, Journal is a key component that allows user to scribble electronic ink onto a document. It can be a blank page to start with or you can print an existing document to the Journal so that you can scribble notes on it or to highlight parts. Without it operating a Tablet is pretty ordinary.

The machine is installed from distributed image and then connects to the Internet by WiFi to retrieve all the Windows updates current to May 13, 2010. At each stage, the Windows Journal is fired up to ensure that it can render the blank page and that I can print from say Adobe Reader/IE8 to a Journal file. The Windows Journal still works even when IE8's Adobe Flash plug-in is installed. During my experiment, Microsoft Security Essentials or AntiVirus are not installed.

The installation of Firefox 3.6.3 proceeds without any trouble. I cannot launch Windows Journal or print from any program that once works to Journal Note Writer the moment Firefox is installed. Printing from Firefox causes the Journal to crash.

All the crashes cause Event ID 1000 and pin-pointed to mostly "C:\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll" or occasionally to "C:\Program Files\Windows Journal\NBDoc.dll". In all events, the exception code is 0xC0000005, which means Access Violation and the fault offset for MSVCRT is the same. Here is a typical Event message:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          5/13/2010 11:55:08 AM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      ABCD-PC7
Description:
Faulting application name: journal.exe, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bc80a
Faulting module name: msvcrt.dll, version: 7.0.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bda6f
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00009c7f
Faulting process id: 0x14d4
Faulting application start time: 0x01caf25012163ca9
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\windows journal\journal.exe
Faulting module path: C:\windows\system32\msvcrt.dll

Finally, after I've uninstalled Firefox, I launched a command prompt that "Run as administrator" and to apply the following steps to recover the Windows Journal:
In the "C:\Program Files\Windows Journal" directory
1) Run
Regsvr32 /u NBDoc.dll
Regsvr32 NBDoc.dll

2) Run
Journal /repairnotewriter

If you happen to run the last command in a CMD running as the log in user, a message box will inform you that it cannot find the specific file.

3) Then reboot.

When the machine is restarted, you can try to bring up Journal. It may still crash or it may bring up the Windows Journal Recovery dialog box as the last one you tried to print from Firefox did not go to completion. Do not choose to recover and this should bring up the blank page. You can then close the Journal Writer to complete the recover process.

You may also choose to launch the Journal Writer with an existing JNT file when launching by itself fails.

After the Windows Journal is restored (with Firefox uninstalled of course) you can print from IE or any programs.

I have been a long time Tablet user and is still using my P1510 running XP with Firefox and I have never seen this bizarre interference.

If anyone has any idea what is exactly happening in the background causing them to be hostile to each other or similar bizarre interference, I would like to hear from you. If you have a way to fix this, it is even more welcoming.

Is Chrome Browser that crash hot?

Lately, the Internet is raving about the Chrome Browser from Google. While there are some features that I like and are better than Firefox and IE, it has problem in handling basic layouts.

This is the portion of a normal page on a small screen Fujitsu P1510 running with 120DPI settings when viewed by IE6:

The same port of the same page is rendered by Firefox v3.5.3 and captured as follows:

Notice the graph has been incorrectly laid out covering part of the text. Below is the same portion rendered on Google Chrome 3.0.195.21:
Chrome suffers the same layout problem as in Firefox. So far the only browser that handles this basic layout correctly is the 'ancient' IE6 browser, despise so much hot-air being pumped into the Net about Chrome's JavaScript superiority.

Is it just pure hype? The figures don't lie.

First look at IE8

I have expressed my dissatisfaction with IE7 on this blogs for several occasions and offering my conclusion why IE7's uptake fails to materialize and yielding market shares to Firefox.

There are two issues I am really interested in IE8 and they are:
1) I failed to understand Microsoft's irrational pursue of demanding WGA validation during the installation of IE7. Even more distasteful was Microsoft allowed IE7, not an insignificant amount of bytes, to be downloaded without WGA validation then failing the installation on WGA validation failure. This was mean and wasting bandwidth. So I am interested to see if Microsoft wanting to continue this irrational pursue of WGA validation in IE8 that would only further erode its market shares.

2) I want to see if I can still use IE8 in an LUA arrangement as an Windows Explorer with Admin privilege. IE7 can't. This to me is probably less important than say the item 1). If IE8 can be installed without WGA bothering, I will overlook the short comings of this issue because I can almost invoke every control panel applets or MSC files from administrator's console.

It is delightful to see Microsoft has learned a lesson from the IE7 irrational pursue of WGA validation and there is no bothering of WGA validation in IE - downloads or installation. Well done Microsoft.

This is the right thing to do if Microsoft is genuinely keen on protecting users from the evils of the Internets. Besides you can't buy IE even if you want to pay. Let's hope that Microsoft will begin to push this down to Windows users via the Windows Updates.

Actually I tell a small lie. If you are running XP SP2 and that you have not installed the KB932823 update, the IE8 installation insists on you having this update installed. This update is only available to those meeting the WGA validation requirement. In short, IE8 is not fully so generous as Firefox. However, that requirement can easily by-passed. Once that update is installed, IE8 is happy to install it on XP-SP2.

Those with SP3 need not worry and IE8 is very generous in that regard.

It will remain to be seen whether this direction will arrest the erosion of IE market shares by other browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Safari. With the demand for KB932823 meeting WGA validation as mentioned above, I have doubt that IE8 can arrest the erosion.

However, IE8 behaves much like its older sibling and fails to work as a Windows Explorer with administrative privilege, a feature of IE6. As said, I can put up with this mild inconvenience as I can invoke all but a few control panel applets from administrator's console. What I will miss most is the UI to change the ACLs. Fortunately, complex operations requiring the UI support are rare and the use of CACLS command is adequate for most of the usage.

Hence the lack of WGA bothering is more than compensation for the failure to act as a Windows Explorer.

Will I jump back to IE8? Not too sure yet. This is not a matter of performance but more on my fondness for the vast collections of Add-in offered by Firefox. It is like a kid deserting a well-stocked lolly shop - not willingly and likely without dragging kicking and screaming.

I did venture into the IE8 Add-in gallery but it looks very poorly stocked. May be over time, this will change and let's hope so.

A first encounter with Google Chrome

For some time now, the media and blog-spheres are full of praises for Chrome and hence I have decided to dip my toe into the Chrome (version 1.0.154.48) to see what it is like.

1.   Chrome is not a unsual Windows program in that it does not require Administrative rights to install. It is more akin to a .Net ClickOnce deployed solution in which the solution is installed in the user's profile area. So if you, like me, has several accounts in an XP box, you need to install it with each account.

2. I was really interested in the much hyped feature of one tab page per process technique which protects the Chrome process (the one visible to the user) from being torn down by a crash when processing one page. Armed with Spy++ and Process Explorer, I began my exploration. What I can tell is:

• Yes, there is indeed one process (Chrome.exe) per tab page. Actually more than one process per page. 
• But all visual Windows belong to one process, the parent process of Chrome. 
• On the supporting processes, they seem to also host some dummy windows whose functions yet to be identified. They seem to be hidden windows of 0x0 size. 

After all, I have never heard of a way to marshal a window across processes. This makes sense, albeit a very blunt way of doing thing, of using process isolation to do all the polling, threading and interaction with remote internet sites and then rendering the data in one process.

This technique is nothing new and is a common idiom to provide the most robust defence against crashes.

One nice touch of Chrome is its support for Tablet PC without Add-in that is required in Firefox. Opera does not even support Tablet PC. Then again, does Chrome have add-in?

Chrome starts much much much quicker than Firefox and this, together with the support of Tablet PC out-of-the-box, Chrome may have won my approval for a switch.

IE7 Vs Firefox European survey

Two recent reports released by Web Browser survey company report some very encouraging signs that Firefox has actually pulled ahead of IE7 in Europe.

In this report, they have identified the adoption of IE7 amongst the IE users is only 33.9% versus 83.2% of FF2 in the group of Firefox users. This is interesting showing a lack of endorsement of IE7, which was touted as more secure relative to the vulnerable IE6, in IE users group .

Furthermore, it is interesting to find in significant number of European countries, more people are actually using FF2 than IE7.

The other report shows a relentless increase of FF2 market share touching a shade below 28% across Europe. It also reported that Slovenia and Finland has passed 45% mark.

Good show. Slowly chipping away the dominance of IE.

Ungreyed the OK button in Firefox's download dialog box

Firefox is a great product and I use it wherever a web site does not spill out FF-unfriendly pages.

However, there is a bug in FF (version 2.0.0.3) that calls for some radical way to deal with it. Do not apply this technique to other Windows applications.

In a normal FF, it is set to download to the desktop and that for a file type (more correctly MIME Type) of say PDF, it is set to invoke the viewer automatically. This kind of setting is stored in a file in your Windows profile area under the tree
"Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[a unique FF profile directory]". For those .Net Programmers, it is kind of like Isolated Storage. FF generates a unique directory name for your FF profile.

In there you will find a file called mimeTypes.rdf.

Now, here are the steps to reproduce the bug. Since this is an experiment and that you may like to restore to the original state, you should take a copy of the file mimeTypes.rdf to a safe place. When you have finished with this experiment, simply overwrite the mimeTypes.rdf with the original copy and you would not know that you have mucked around with FF.

Now open FF and go to the Tools | Options... to bring up the Options dialog box.

• In the Main section, set the download option to "Always ask me where to save files".
• In the Content section, click the "Manage..." button for the File Types. You should see a list of types in Download Actions dialog box. Look for PDF type and click on it. The "Remove Action" button is then ungreyed. Click it to delete the PDF from the list.

Now close that dialog box to return to FF. Navigate to a web site where you find a PDF to download.

If you simply click on that link for the PDF, FF will bring up a dialog box asking you what action you would like and it looks like this. If you do not get this, restart FF.


I have actually find this dialog box extremely handy. See the greyed out "OK" button circled in red. According to Mozilla, this is a bug and is caused by some kind of corrupted mimeTypes.rdf file.

Don't be fooled by this greyed button, which in normal Windows UI indicating that it has been disabled. Far from it, in FF-land and is very much alive and kicking.

I do not believe that this is caused by a corrupted mimeTypes.rdf file. I have successfully demonstrated with a brand new installation in an environment that I have manually cleaned up every scrap of Mozilla stuff. By following my steps above, I could reproduce this.

I have further proof that it is most likely a coding or logic bug inside Mozilla's GUI engine in dealing with button and activation process. Here are the ways to ungrey that button to get to that PDF file you want.

1. The simplest of the lot is alt-tab away from FF and alt-tab back. The greyed OK button now become ungreyed and you can select it.
   
2. For those using tablet PC, it can be very inconvenient to perform alt-tab. So tap or click on the greyed OK button (didn't I say radical way before as you would be a fool to do that to a Windows application?) once and it will become ungreyed. A second tap or click on the OK button select the action.

In Windows, if a button is greyed (disabled) your program will not receive any button click message. Hence clicking it will not do anything at all. Since I am not familiar with the internals of FF and in particular its GUI engine, I wouldn't know where the fault actually is.

As demonstrated, it is not random and it can be reproduced consistently. So Mozilla engineer should be able to home in to the trouble.

IE7 Uptake stagnant - that's obvious.

Recently PC World reports that the uptake of IE7 has stagnant even with the release of Vista.

It does not really need much to work out exactly why. If MS wants everyone to move over to IE7, all it has to do is to remove the WGA check on installation. The slimy thing is that its Windows update downloads IE7 first before asserting if the Windows is WGA compliant.

To me it seems like a deliberate act of wasting people's Internet bandwidth.

Removing that check may restore some fondness to upgrade to IE7. Besides who needs IE7, those failing WGA check are mightily happy with Firefox and I am sure that they are promoting Firefox willingly rather than IE7.

Even on my WGA compliant machine, I do not install IE7 for good reason.

More on IE Vs Firefox market share

This is a more detail analysis of the market shares of various Browsers.

Interesting observation of the war:

Firefox has grown the most over time, with a sharp rise reported in mid September last year. For the most part, this is at the expense of other browsers such as Safari and Opera, rather than Internet Explorer, but as the year progresses towards Christmas time, these other browsers temporarily overtake Internet Explorer.

With respect to the uptake of IE7, the report indicates:

The fact that the numbers appear to be the same means it's safe to assume that most IE6 users haven't yet defected to Firefox. However, what is interesting to note is that the uptake levels off at the end of December 2006. What reasons can we guess for this?

Well, a major component has to be the vast amount of people in the world with cracked, illegal versions of Windows XP who strictly control their communications with Microsoft and do not want any new software from them - or for whom WGA is a stumbling block. In some circles it's even a matter of pride to say you've never bought a Microsoft product and yet use the full suite of their products extensively.

Another reason may be that there are problems with old hardware not being able to deal with memory and system demands of IE7.

Their observation seems to suggest validity in my argument that Microsoft through their WGA initiative is pushing people towards either alternate browser, like Firefox, or to stay with IE6.