Firefox Copy & Paste Bug: (Not) Fixed!!

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Ever since we expressed our frustration and outrage about what was potentially the most annoying bug in Firefox to date, several big and small websites around the web picked up the cry, and a flurry of activity ensued on the Mozilla Bug Entry for this particular glitch. More than a thousand users contacted us about their experiences with this bug, and soon enough, the media generated enough attention to warrant this bug a second look. It didn’t take long for the bug to be pinned down and a fix found; and here we are today, only a month later, with links to a Firefox build that makes your copy and paste experience complete!

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If you missed out on all the hype, there was a bug in all Mozilla products (yes, each and every one) that would sometimes render the copy functions useless. It made submitting that last minute report for university impossible, it made reply to others on Newsgroups and forums with quotes impossible, and perhaps worst of all, it made many men (and women) with healthy heads of hair tear it out by the acre as it drove them insane.  No OS was safe, every single version whether for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, or more, was afflicted, and formats were of no avail. To top it all off, it had been bugged continuously be various users for over four years!

The Solution:

It turns out there are two different ‘bugs’ in Firefox;

  • The first (and real) bug is that Firefox would *randomly* stop copying, and restarting the program would temporarily help. This bug occurs on all Operating Systems and in all Mozilla products.
  • The second issue is not a bug, rather it is caused by malware on your machine, only affects Windows computers, and results in a complete and indiscriminating inablity to copy in Firefox. This is not a Firefox bug, but a symptom of an infected PC.

The first is the difficult one, but it has been fixed, thanks to your relentless barrage of emails to NeoSmart Technologies and me, your diggs on Digg.com, your blog posts, Bugtrac replies, and obsession with getting it fixed. It is now available in Firefox 1.5.0.4, which is due to be released any day now. You can download it in pre-release form from one of the links below.

The second issue regarding the malware is a bit harder to handle. Thanks to Richard Warrender, we have identified the malware as being the “advertmen” spyware infiltration. Removing it is not all that difficult, the problem lies in that this isn’t one of the more popular infiltrations; and fewer antispyware programs pick it up:

Warning: These steps involve modifying the system registry. Neither NeoSmart Technololgies nor the Computer Guru can be held liable for any damage incurred!!

  1. Important! Close all Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer windows.
  2. Run “regedit.exe”
  3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
  4. On the right-hand side you should see a String called “AppInit_DLLs” with a value of “pushow*.dll” where * is a random number.
  5. Right-click on this String and click Delete and then exit regedit.
  6. Open “C:\windows\system32\”
  7. In that folder there is a file called “pushow*.dll,” where * is the random number you saw above. Delete all pushow*.dll files.

You’re done! Don’t go to any of the evil sites, and please don’t do download another exe of unknown origin! Remember, prevention is the best cure!

If you would like to discuss this bug/spyware or any other, or ask for support on how to remove it, please use our forums; any support requests below will be deleted.

You can digg this entry here. Please don’t abuse the blog by posting support requests below, they belong in the forum.

127 thoughts on “Firefox Copy & Paste Bug: (Not) Fixed!!”

  1. I am jumping for joy. Finally the nightmare is over. Seriously though, 4 years is a long time to live with such an annoying bug, so I’ll just say it. IT’S ABOUT TIME!

  3. I can’t believe this is finally fixed!! Thank you very much for letting us know, no more shutting down my browser 20 times a day to fix it. yey :))

  5. Yay!  Some more details about the bug and its reasons?  Who introduced the bug and what were the failures in testing (etc.) that allowed it to remain.  In other words: NOW THAT THIS UNFORTUNATE EPISODE IS OVER, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?!! David 

  9. Damn, if all this is true, then we?re in this deeper than we
    thought! I have been using Opera since, and it?s great, but for the
    sake of this bug I will use FF for a couple of days :)

  10. Nope, doesn’t work for me either, in Minefield or FF. Looks like I’ll be moving back to Opera, going to miss the extensions tho. Never had this problem till 1.5.0.2

  11. OK, I will reopen the bug based on the comments here. I have yet to experience it, but I know better than to claim that means it doesn’t happen anymore.

    BTW, I’m on Windows Server 2003, and, though I forgot to mention it before, I never did get this bug on 2k3….. 

  12. Reliable fix, and I now suspect spyware/malware

    Okay found a fix that seems to work reliably. I’d like others to try it and see if it works.

    1) Close all instances of firefox.
    2) Rename firefox.exe to afirefox.exe (or any other name for that matter).
    3) Start the renamed executable. No need to reboot or do anything else.

    My problem was cut/copy not working at all, scroll wheel on mouse not working at all. Tried reboots, uninstalling, removing profiles and reinstalling version 1.5.0.1, 1.5.0.2, 1.8, 1.0.5, and 1.0. Tried the new.net removals. Tried changing user.js. None of that worked. The above steps did work.

    My conclusion is that SOMETHING is interfeering with the clipboard for program known as firefox.exe. I have no idea what though. I tried copying notepad.exe to firefox.exe and placing it in the same directory, but when I start notepad as firefox.exe the clipboard in the renamed notepad works just fine. So now if I’m right we’re talking about something that interfeers with firefox very specifically and deliberately, or one of the strangest bugs I’ve EVER seen.

    System is windows XP SP2. Firefox version currently in use is 1.5.0.1.

  13. Additional:

    I can rename back to firefox.exe to reproduce the bug. Tried about 7 times (closing firefox completely between attempts, and rebooted once in between tries just to make sure I had a clean running system). If the name is firefox.exe cut and copy do not work, mouse scroll does not work. If the name is afirefox.exe all works fine. The existance of firefox.exe is not a problem. I can have a copy named firefox.exe but I must start my first running instance from an executable named something else otherwise copy, cut and scroll do not work.

  14. I am glad that I found this blog!!! This “bug” has been driving me nuts for the last week. I tried every fix that I could find on the ‘net and nothing worked. All other computers that I have do not share this “bug”. All computers are XP and all have the latest XP updates. This laptop is used most of the time for Internet use so I suspect a malware but have run many programs with no success at finding it yet. The fact that it only happens on this laptop with extensive Internet browsing leads be to believe it is something that I “picked up”. FYI…The “afirefox” renaming works.

  16. Computer Guru, I downloaded and installed the Minefield and the problem was the same as with Firefox. Then I changed the name for the exe file that launches the Minefield browser from firefox.exe to afirefox.exe, and everything works fine just as when I did the same change with the firefox.exe file that launches Firefox. Could the problem be that you have named the exe file in Minefield, firefox.exe, and not minefield.exe? As Sammy Yousef pointed out, the bug seems to be related to the name firefox.exe.

  17. Hello Ibsen, I had replied to this bug here, but unfortunately the databased crashed and this reply was lost. Basically at the moment we have pinned the problem down as being *two* seperate bugs; one that results in a random loss of copying abilities and occurs in all Mozilla products on all operating systems, and this has been fixed in Minefield, and another bug that only occurs on Windows in Firefox and results in *never* being able to copy. This latter "bug" is actually a problem with the end-users' PCs and not wholly related to Firefox; normally it is caused by malware or download managers intercepting the copy commands; and it is fixed by renaming the file. I hope this clears things up.

  18. This really works! I had also been plagued with these annoying pop-ups that no program could find.

    I tried your fix and all is back to normal. No pop-ups even on IE and Firefox is back to its normal firefox.exe.

    I did find out that I had to reboot after the registry deletions. Some of the DLL’s that were present in the ’32 folder would not delete until after I rebooted and the registry was clean.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  19. Minefield  IS  GARBAGE  is slow , not is firefox this is a fixed bug hahah crap. 

  20. for those of you still having the malware problem, the name of the dll is not *always* pushow*.dll but can be a variant on popupshow.dll  Just read over your dll's in the relevant folder and make sure you don't have any permutation.  I have not encountered a case where it wasn't a bad dll.  The firefox security group is keeping an eye on this, but without knowing exactly what the malware is and when it started propogating, it is difficult to determine whether 1.5.0.2 was more vulnerable than past versions, or if the timing was a coincidence.  If someone actually has the exe that installs this spyware that would be awesome to get to the devs. As for the amount of time it took to fix the bug, if it's not reproducible it is nearly *impossible* to fix.  What most likely occured was something else was fixed and devs realized that also fixed the problem, or someone was fixing something else and noticed a behavior that would create this problem under certain circumstances.  Fortunately the vast majority of users never encountered the problem, unfortunately that meant the users that did, had to suffer, especially as more critical bugs that affected everyone had to take precedence. *****Minefield is experimental and not recommended for any use beyond testing code, hence the name.  Bon Echo will be Firefox 2, not 1.8 (that is a gecko version number).  Get *Bon Echo* if you want the fix, or wait for 1.5.0.4 (which will be the next patch, 1.5.0.3 is the current version) Not sure on the target date for that, but it shouldn't be far off.*****

  21. I actually have downloaded this malware somewhere from a p2p network under a totally different name. I thought this is the program I am searching for, so I just install it. But it happens to be a malware, and my uptodate pc-cillin did not make an alert….. But thanks to the guidance here, I am able to remove it. Where should I send this malware installation to? 

  25. Yes, it looks complicated, but once someone explains it to you it's pretty simple.  It's up there, thanks!

  28. Would you please tell me how to uninstall this Minefield COMPLETELY? I want to rollback to firefox 1.5 because I cannot use those favorite extensions any more, even I reinstall firefox 1.5! Thanks.  

  30. Computer Guru – Please edit your post so that you're not pointing people to Minefield, especially as you provide NO warning that it's experimental and ***NOT STABLE*** As it is, 1.5.0.4 is code frozen and due to release any day now.  If you are having trouble with firefox or minefield please use mozilla support channels, either the forums or knowledge base at http://www.mozillazine.org or go to #firefox on irc.mozilla.org

  31. Hello Majken; thanks for pointing that out. I have updated the links to reflect the 1.5.0.4 tinderbox build, which I hope is secure and stable enough and also has the fix needed :)

  32. dear my computer installed advertismen software. i can’t uninstall this. when i go to add and remove place , i try to remove, ask me to restart if i want to remove. i restart many times but i couln’t uninstall this. please reply me

    This issue was taken care of in the forums; -CG

  35. Thank you so much! I’ve been using Internet Explorer for like the last year because of the copy button not working.

  37. I have been hit by this bug ever since I switched to FireFox. I assumed it was due to some glitch in the OS, but now I read your posting trail, I realise it was the random it stops working.

    THANK YOU for getting this fixed.

    Thomas

  38. “The Solution:
    It turns out there are two different ‘bugs’ in Firefox;

    The first (and real) bug is that Firefox would *randomly* stop copying, and restarting the program would temporarily help. This bug occurs on all Operating Systems and in all Mozilla products.”

    .. this problem is still there in Firefox 1.5.0.4; not talking about malware but instead about the “Copy” option not being present/not working (CTRL C also) randomly (also “Paste”) .. works again (for example) even without restarting the program, just by opening (other) new windows;

    Something was posted here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=214898&action=view (but) I mean that’s no solution .. Can’t believe that after hours of searching I’ve been unable to solve this :( How can it be done ?? Please contact Vladimir, tnx: misenscene@gmail.com

  40. Pity there is still a copy/paste bug there.

    Using WinXP SP2 FF 1.5.0.4 with two windows open copy/paste doesn’t work in the second window. The first windows is fine, the second it doesn’t work.
    Also several other keys fail to work correctly, e.g. entering ‘ into a text box causes the find box to open (No I don’t have auto search switched on.). Again only in the second window, the first one is always fine.

  41. The Bugzilla bug that pertains to the *continuing* problem on Windows and Mac OS X (but apparently not Linux) is 220900. It is not marked Fixed. The bug that you reference, 133439, is called “Copy to clipboard fails OLE call with CLIPBRD_E_CANT_OPEN” and is a specific, Windows-only issue that appears to be *in addition* to the unfixed 220900, which is called “Focus breaks, cut/copy/paste and other focus-dependent tasks broken”.

  42. I was able to delete pushow6.dell on the first time, but when i went to /C:// or something like that, it only let me delete pushow87.dell or some number like that but it didnt let me delete pushow6.dell.

    So i went to FF and the problem stop and i was wondering if there is anything wrong with leaving that file i couldnt delete there?

  43. It needs all the files to run, so if you deleted some of them and the problem disappeared, you’re clean.

    I recommend DLing the (free) MS Windows Defender – new definitions should have the fix for this.

  44. Hi, I was very worried about this bug, but mine was for the fu**ing pushow*.dll, I erased the key and after I tried to delete the file from my computer but the process was running. If you want to delete without the bored of restart in secure mode, follow these little steps:

    • Download process explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com
    • Open it
    • Press Ctrl D to show the dll’s
    • Click on Explorer.exe and see if the pushow*.dll are running
    • Open a shell and go to your windows/system32 path
    • Only type: del pushow**.dll (without enter)
    • In the process explorer window click on kill process
    • At this time you killed the explorer.exe and only command window is open
    • Press enter to delete pushow***.dll
    • Find by commands if the dll was deleted
    • Restart

    Remember that the asterisks may be replaced by the random number generated on your computer!

    Thanks a lot to this page !!!!

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; es-ES; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

  45. Copy and paste bug

    ‘find’ bar open automatically

    Firefox is a joke.
    no serious computer user uses it any more.

    these bugs have been goin on for YEARS and the newbies that firefox brought are done with opera and other opperating systems.

    the probelem is esy….it’s not economics driven.

    there’s no financial incentive to fix it.

    With IE if there’s aproblem it reflects onthe whole of microsoft so it’s fixed.

    There is NO long term solution known for th two bugs and that’s why the zillions of us who used firefox are abandoning it in droves

  48. well nothing has fixed it for me, I don’t have the malware problem and as some people above have said, it’s not been fixed. I never experienced this problem with firefox until the release before last. Now it’s happening though it’s a real pain. Meh :(

  50. It *is* fixed. If you are still seeing the issue please seek support from irc.mozilla.org in #firefox or forums.mozillazine.org

  52. Then it’s a different issue/that person has something left over and they need to seek firefox support so that the people that fix these things know what’s still going on. It’s impossible to fix it if we can’t get our hands on people with the issue to determine what’s still happening.

  53. ADVERTISMEN / (PUSHOW.DLL) AD-WARE VIRUS

    I also had this problem and did as Miss D said and it solved my problem. Thank You! Here is a compilation of the information that I found

    In Add/Remove Programs Window:
    Displayed as Advertismen
    (Un-removable from the Remove Option, it will simply restart your computer and the FILE and ENTRY will persist)

    File Binding is:
    pushow##.dll
    pushow.dll

    File Location:
    window/system32 folder

    This ad-ware generates 2 random numbers to further disguise its identity in my case the file was known as
    pushow40.dll in the windows/system32 folder

    In Microsoft Windows Installer Clean-up Utility:
    Unknown

    Does not show up as “Advertismen” nor “pushow##.dll”
    So the Windows Installer Clean-up Utility can not help you remove this file from the Add/Remove Programs window.

    Symantec Norton Anti-virus DID Recognize this file when I did a system scan and I have it in Quarantine but, Quarantine will not remove the file from the computer nor will it remove the Advertismen entry from the Add/Remove Programs window. It will simply prevent this file from being accessed.

    If you need to research more about this file you can do so at http://www.symantec.com ‘s knowledge base by using the key words in the search box “advertismen”

    I will provide Direct Links to the Symantec site and to the Microsoft Install Clean-up Utility. Hopefully these links will continue to remain valid.

    More Information on “advertismen” ad-ware from Symantec

    http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-050812-0313-99&tabid=1

    Download the Microsoft Windows Installer Clean-up Utility from Microsoft.com

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe

    The Clean Up Utility is a great tool that will remove broken or damaged installation entries from the Add/Remove Programs Window. PLEASE USE CAUTION! If you don’t know what a certain entry is. Make sure you research it on the internet before you do any removing of software or files.

  54. This bug is still driving me nuts after two years.

    I jumped for joy when I heard that 1.5.0.4 fixed the issue, but it didn’t. I’m now running 1.5.0.6 and its still plaguing me.

    I really like FF – its much better than IE6, but I’m seriously considering switching back to IE7.

  56. Firefox sucks…I thought I was in love but the honeymoon is now over…BIG TIME. You can’t have software supported without a credible “corporation” behind it — someone to sue when the fu#$ING clipboard doesn’t work. How basic is writing code for the clipboard???

    As soon as IE7 is out of Beta I’m gone.

  57. Majken,

    I also have the problem in 1.0.5.6. It is occasional.

    I do not have a C:\WINDOWS\System32\push*.* file

  59. Thanks for the solutions for Firefox. What about Thunderbird? It still has the same issue (cut and paste is often frozen). Any suggestions?

  60. The _core_ issue has not been fixed. So Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, FF, they’re still buggy. BUT if the pushow*.dll fixed your FF, your Thunderbird should be good to go too :)

  61. I have recent releases of FF (1.5.0.6) and TB (1.5.0.2) running on a brand new and very clean PC. FF is running flawlessly (well within expectations) but TB has the C&P fault. Searches of the system produce no signs of pushow*.dll or popupshow.dll.

    An older version of FF on my laptop had the problem but updating remedied that.

    PS even trying to copy the version no. from TB failed (copy was listed but nothing stuck in memory to paste here)

  62. Great solution! It works for me!

    I found 2 files of pushow*.dll in windows\system32 and one of them was denied to be deleted. It happened to be renamable and movable to a different location.

    After reg editing, pushow*.dll removal and renaming, restarting Firefox, the problem disappears.

    Thanks.

  63. After more experimenting I find that the problem involves Outlook. Here is an exact description of a problem that occurs 100% of the time for me. (Note: this description was copied from another forum at .

    “I am running
    Firefox 1.5.0.6
    WinXP Pro SP-2
    Outlook 2000 SP-3

    If I highlight a text selection from a website in Firefox 1.5 and COPY it,
    when I attempt to PASTE the selection into Outlook, it creates
    an ATTACHMENT to the email msg instead of pasting the text into the msg.

    However,
    If I open the same page in IE and COPY the SAME selection,
    when I paste into Outlook, it acts normally, pasting the copied text, without creating the attachment.

    However, I can paste the Firefox copy into something else (like a text editor and Word 2000), just not into Outlook.

    Here is a key factor:
    This happens if Outlook is set to send PLAIN TEXT messages.
    This does not happen if Outlook is set to send HTML messages.”

  64. Hi,

    That’s not a bug in Firefox (it’s pure Outlook in question) and is unrelated to the issues discussed in this thread. So long as you can paste, it’s not this bug at play. With this bug, your clipboard is corrupted and either loses all data, or just doesn’t update.

  65. So, really this isn’t a support request, but it is a comment on this (or at least a related) issue.

    I’m still having a problem that stops copy/paste in Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Windows Server 2003. (Though it did appear to go away for a time briefly during 1.5.0.4…)

    Basically every now and again I get into a state where I can’t use ctrl-c/ctrl-v/shift-home/shift-end/home/end/shift-left/shift-right/ etc. for simple text navigation and cut/paste. I checked for “pushow” in my registry and just see a blank AppInit_DLLs string (as opposed to the string not being there). pushow*.dll also is not in my system32 directory.

    Basically, I don’t think this bug is gone for good at least something related still seems to be affecting me. I’ll try renaming firefox.exe, but it’ll take me some time to reproduce the bug since it doesn’t happen all that often to begin with.

    Note: This is a (fairly) clean development machine, and I never get popups.

    Of course, just for the record, are you saying this isn’t fixed in mainline FireFox, just in a particular “Minefield” version???!!! Based on just the text of the article itself, I’d assumed you meant 1.5.0.4 (and the later 1.5.0.6) should be working.

  67. *rolls eyes* there are *plenty* of people who found it fixed on update to 1.5.0.4 Clearly there is another cause, or a variation of the cause that is still coming into play. Of course if people post *here* instead of letting the people who *fix* firefox know what’s going on, they won’t be able to fix it. This isn’t happening to everyone. I don’t know of one dev that has had this issue. That isn’t to say it’s not a real issue, it’s to say that the devs can’t fix something they can’t see. They need contact from users who *are* still seeing the problem so they can figure out what’s different about your setup that is triggering this.

    FWIW if you’re going to post here, include more info. Are you seeing it all the time or just some times? I’ve noticed that it doesn’t have to be pushow listed in that registry place. I’ve seen a google app that fills itself in where pushow did and that broke copy paste. If it’s broken *all* the time, follow the steps listed for cleaning up pushow and remove whatever is at that appinit. I have noted so in the bug tracking the malware and will make sure someone looks to see why that entry breaks copy/paste. If you’re only seeing it *some* of the time then the devs *really* need to hear from you. I’ve suggested in the bug that exists that someone should file a *new* bug for the case that it’s still broken, but I haven’t seen anyone do so yet.

    POSTING ON A BLOG WON’T GET IT FIXED!! LETTING THE DEVS KNOW IT’S STILL BROKEN WILL!!

  68. [quote comment="3779"]Zebulebu – which issue are you seeing? is it broken *all* the time, or just sometimes?[/quote]

    Its not all the time – it happens seemingly at random. Sometimes it will be pretty soon after I start browsing, other times it takes ages before it happens.

    Every time it does happen, I can fix it by closing FF and reopening it, so whatever it is, for me anyway, it seems to be something that happens in memory and is not persistent.

    I don’t have any spyware on my box (none at all – I haven’t had any for nearly two years and I’m proud of that fact)

  69. Zebulebu – would you please file a bug at bugzilla.mozilla.org . When it prompts you for component etc. either don’t worry about changing them, or set them to match the bug that’s mentioned in this blog. If you’re not comfortable filing, please email me at majken@gmail.com and I can get all the info off of you and file it for you.

  70. Here is a way to simply reproduce the problem :
    1. Copy from one instance of FF, with Ctrl-C ( right clic will always work ).
    2. Open a new instance of FF and do a CTRL+V : It won’t Paste
    3. Iconize the window and then restore it back, do a CTRL+V : It is OK

    I use version 1.5.0.6
    I have no DLL in the registry key AppInit_DLLs
    I have no program named Advertisemen in Add/Remove programs

    I still have this problem

    :(

    JD

  73. Here is my experience :

    Open a Firefox, do a Copy
    Open a second Firefox, do a Paste. It may be OK
    Restart :
    Close the second FireFox and return ti the first FF window
    Select another text in the page and do a new Copy
    Open a second Firefox and do a Paste

    It may be OK several times, but after several retries the Paste will stop.

    Tested with a complex page with multiple frames (webmail) : OK 5 times. After, no more Paste
    Tested with Advanced Google Search Page : OK 1 time. After, no more Paste.

    J-Denis

  74. yes, that definitely sounds like the bug I mentioned to you. FWIW if you always open new windows with ctrl+N rather than by clicking on the firefox icon again it doesn’t happen.

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