Zen crashing, then prompting to boot in troubleshoot mode after new update.

[TenebrisNoctua]

Preliminary Checks

• I have read and understood the important section above.
• I have searched existing issues and avoided creating duplicates.
• I am not filing an enhancement request.
• I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.
• I have checked that this issue can be reproduced once I removed all my Mods and Custom CSS.

What happened?

Up until the last update, Zen worked perfectly fine, however, with the recent update Zen now always crashes and prompts me to open it in troubleshoot mode.

The problem begins when you select "Open", it opens the browser, but the browser hangs for a long time, forcing you to terminate it using task manager, making the browser unusable.

Now, I think this might be related to my browser profile, because I then went ahead and modified the profiles.ini file, and set StartWithLastProfile to 0. This opened the profile selection menu, and I created a new profile. This allowed Zen to boot and work perfectly fine, so I tried to use my actual profile again. It crashed as usual, but when I selected open in troubleshoot mode, it didn't hang. The profile loaded and I was able to use the browser just fine.

Expected behavior

The browser loads my profile as expected, without having to boot into troubleshoot mode.

Actual behavior

The browser crashes and/or hangs.

Steps to reproduce

Not sure how I can describe reproduction steps, since it was an update that caused this issue. I have re-started my computer many times, but it seemed to not make a difference.

Screenshots and videos

No response

Version

1.21.9b

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Windows - x64

What component is this issue related to?

Performance

Relevant log output if applicable

[ashvwinn]

Do you have this disabled?

Maybe you changed some prefs related to performance which may be causing it?

[Propheticus]

Firefox's release notes also mention v153.0.1 fixes a startup issue in v153 (latest Zen is based on this) and there's an unresolved one:

Some Windows users may experience a crash on startup after updating, caused by an incomplete update leaving the Firefox installation in an inconsistent state (Bug 1681745). If you are affected, downloading Firefox from firefox.com and installing it over your existing installation will repair it. Your bookmarks, passwords and other data are stored separately and will not be affected.

Could you try doing a full install from the installer?
Can be done over your existing install.

[TenebrisNoctua]

Could you try doing a full install from the installer?
Can be done over your existing install.

I did try to do a full re-install, but the issue persisted.

Do you have this disabled?

Maybe you changed some prefs related to performance which may be causing it?

I have it enabled:

I haven't done any changes to settings recently.