Author Topic: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom  (Read 177 times)

Pete

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Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« on: July 11, 2026, 02:31:44 am »
Hi All

This came as a surprise.
The system was shutdown about 2 weeks ago after running seamonkey happily for a while.
Obviously system and seamonkey have not updated or deleted files while shutdown.
I can only guess that something glitched when seamonkey was last closed.

Dropping seamonkey onto pmdll shows no problem.

What to try to fix this?


Regards

Pete



Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2026, 03:31:52 am »
...This came as a surprise.
The system was shutdown about 2 weeks ago after running seamonkey happily for a while.
Obviously system and seamonkey have not updated or deleted files while shutdown.
I can only guess that something glitched when seamonkey was last closed.

Dropping seamonkey onto pmdll shows no problem.

What to try to fix this?...

Does Seamonkey have the option to start up with/to a Profile Manager (along the lines of what you can do with Firefox using "-ProfileManager" as the command line parameter)?

If it does, at least that approach might narrow things down to either a 'profile issue', or a large application problem.

If that is a no-go, how about the equivalent of FF's "-safe-mode"? Again, same deal, use as a CLI option.

Last but not least, what is the error msg you are seeing right now? Judging by the title of your post it would appear that the app doesn't even start up...

Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2026, 03:36:00 am »
You have to drop xul.dll on pmdll to get any info on the linked DLLs.
The could not load xpcom is a horrible error as xpcom.dll is long gone and could have many causes, though usually a DLL that can't be loaded.
Things to try,
Run SeaMonkey -help and see if a closed VIO window appears with the title Completed:SeaMonkey containing the help appears on your desktop.
Run SeaMonkey --ProfileManager to see if the profile manager comes up. If so, create a new test profile and see if that works.
And of course try PMDLL on xul.dll
Can't think of anything else right now besides reinstalling all the prerequisites, which I've forgotten.

Pete

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2026, 09:04:42 pm »
Hi All

Any form of "run Seamonkey ..." is a non-starter.

Dropping xul.dll on to pmdll showed xul.dll could not find various dll files present in the same diredtory. Setting pmdll Current directory to seamonkey resolved all but 1 failure: lgpllibs.dll "DLL could not be loaded, error 87, reason unknown".
Possibly corrupt file?...

Looking at file dates I realised this was an older version of 2.42.9esr so updated to seamonkey-2.42.9esr.en-US-P4-GCC10.3.0-12-06-22.os2.zip

No change, seamonkey still fails to start with the xpcom error, pmdll shows the same problem with lgpllibs.dll

So, probably something glitched within the *nixy support files. Any ideas?


Regards

Pete

Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2026, 10:02:35 pm »
Have you tried Firefox. I'd expect the same failure but I assume it is installed so an easy test, same with Thunderbird.
gpllibs.dll does show that it loads here in PMMDLL.
Gpllibs.dll, I believe dynamically loads the FFmpeg stuff, just libavcodec and libavutil IIRC.
Not sure which your SM loads but could try reinstalling ffmpeg-legacy-56 and ffmpeg-legacy-58. Maybe even uninstall them if easy. SM should run fine without them besides some multimedia stuff like MP3's no longer working. SM is probably using ffmpeg-legacy-58 but I'm having a hard time finding the code that decides.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2026, 01:12:32 am »
Pete!

...Dropping xul.dll on to pmdll showed xul.dll could not find various dll files present in the same diredtory. Setting pmdll Current directory to seamonkey resolved all but 1 failure: lgpllibs.dll "DLL could not be loaded, error 87, reason unknown".
Possibly corrupt file?...
...
So, probably something glitched within the *nixy support files. Any ideas?...

All my RPM searches do not show any RPM package that provides that file, and doing a check on my system only shows the following:

Code: [Select]
[G:\]locate gpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/CURRENT_P4/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/DAVEYEO_LATEST_AMD/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/DAVEYEO_bulldozer_AMD/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/DAVEYEO_current_phenom/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/PREVIOUS_P4/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/FIREFOX_RELEASES/PREVIOUS_i686/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/firefox/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/firefox/lgpllibs.dll.ga
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird/lgpllibs.dll.ga
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird_releases/CURRENT-P4/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird_releases/CURRENT-i686/PREVIOUS/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird_releases/CURRENT-i686/lgpllibs.dll
/apps/tcpip/thunderbird_releases/pentiumM/lgpllibs.dll

So I'm thinking this is something that's part of the Firefix/Thunderbird/Seamonkey install.

Pete

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2026, 01:40:12 am »
Hi All

Yes, lgpllibs.dll is a seamonkey supplied file.

None of the ffmpeg-legacy-5* packages previously installed on this system - mainly used by wife to fetch email on an occasional basis.

No, Firefox/Thunderbird not installed - tried them years back and decided I preferred Seamonkey :-)
Guess I could install Firefox to test this, Where to get the most recent build?


Regards

Pete


Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #7 on: July 13, 2026, 03:02:38 am »
Should appear at ftp://dry@ftp.os2voice.org/tmp/mozilla/ shortly, along with recent builds of SM and TB. All require an SSE2 capable CPU. Also the latest of some of the requirements like VPX.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2026, 03:26:14 am »
Looking more closely at lgpllibs.dll, it seems to contain libsoundtouch, which is in the tree and does use SSE[2] on these builds.
The libraries it is linked to are basic,
Code: [Select]
H:\tmp\ldconv_libcx_a_5c3468194e631687e0.lib
W:\usr\lib\stdc++_dll.lib
W:\usr\lib\gcc\i686-pc-os2-emx\9\libgcc_eh.lib
W:\usr\lib\gcc\i686-pc-os2-emx\9\libgcc.lib
W:\usr\lib\libc_alias.lib
W:\usr\lib\libc_dll.lib
W:\usr\lib\libos2.lib
W:\usr\lib\libend.lib
So I don't see why it wouldn't load assuming most other GCC compiled programs are working fine.
Back to wondering if another dependency got bit rot.
You could try running "seamonkey.exe 2>&1 | tee sm.log" though I'd guess it crashes before anything will be logged.
Edit: Have you checked for trp files? Be in @unixroot\var\log\apps

Andi B.

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #9 on: July 13, 2026, 10:05:19 am »
Isn't error 87 out of memory? Did you check shared mem?

Steven Levine

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #10 on: July 13, 2026, 08:54:35 pm »
Error 87 is invalid parameter, which is pretty generic.

FWIW, if I had this issue, I would save my seamonkey profile directory and clear the profile directory and try starting seamonkey as if it was a new install.  This assumes that -profilemanager did not allow you create a new test profile.

Since seamonkey was working, using tools like pmdll and chkdll32 are not going to help unless you made a change to your installed DLLs or other parts of the installation since seamonkey last worked.  Based on what's been said so far, I would be looking for a data probably and not and executable problem.

Steven

Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #11 on: July 13, 2026, 09:14:01 pm »
With a profile issue, "seamonkey -help" would have succeeded as well as "seamonkey --ProfileManager" "seamonkey -v" is another one where SM should simply open a VIO window with the version number and leave it on the desktop and exit.
SeaMonkey may expose hardware problems as well as it stresses the system more then most programs.
Edit:, one day Thunderbird crashed on me and all Mozilla apps refused to start. I lucked out as the first DIMM I pulled allowed the system to be back working including the Mozilla apps, though with 25% less ram (1.5GB)
Going further back, with a Cyrix 686, Netscape was always crashing, swapped in a real Pentium and those crashes went away.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2026, 09:21:16 pm by Dave Yeo »

Pete

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #12 on: July 13, 2026, 11:16:10 pm »
Hi All

Today seamonkey fails to start, displays the xpcom message.
However, dropping xul.dll onto pmdll, setting current directory and refreshing the tree shows no problem...

Looking through the various packages installed via ANPM I notice that a lot are i686 with some p4. I think I was in the process of converting to p4 at the time I replaced the system box with newer hardware and that could be part of the problem. Is there a way of doing a mass conversion of i686 to p4 packages? - I seem to recall a discussion about this a few years ago but have failed to find that discussion so far.

Another possibilty is a hardware problem: this is an "occasional use" box so I should probably open it up and see how clean it is - being liquid cooled I know the cpu is not going to overheat due to dust buildup   :-) - mem /v reports the correct amount of physical ram and all seems to work as it should... 

No problem running various installed software eg AOO writer/spreadsheet, Lucide, PMView. In fact, the only problem seems to be seamonkey...


Regards

Pete

Dave Yeo

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #13 on: July 14, 2026, 03:41:50 am »
It shouldn't matter much about the mixed i686 and pentium4 packages though going forward updating might fail.
Unluckily, there is no simple easy way to replace the packages, especially as currently RPM seems slightly broken where trying to replace a rpm seems to succeed but doesn't.
Basically have to get your list of packages,
Code: [Select]
rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME}\n" > packages.lst
unlock all the DLLs in \usr\lib, move /etc /usr /var out of the way.
Download https://repos.arcanoae.com/anpm/pentium4/rpm-yum-base-os2-pentium4-2025-11-22.exe and run it in the root. Reboot.
And install all the packages in packages.lst.
Install the findutils and run
Code: [Select]
xargs yum --enablerepo=arca_inst --skip-broken -y install < packages.lst 2>&1 | tee packet.lst.log
The tricky part is the enablerepo arca_inst which is on the ISO, to quote Lewis, who posted most of this,
Code: [Select]
Mount the latest ArcaOS ISO, ensuring that the letter matches the path
   rewriter setting (or change the path rewriter setting to match the
   letter assigned for ISODrive).
  Create local-rpm.repo, if necessary, or copy from backup
This is to catch things like arcamapper-ui which is only available on the ISO repostory.

Big job, good to have a backup before starting and I may have missed stuff like whether to enable netlabs.exp and not sure if the logging will work.
I might try this later.

As for your SeaMonkey problem, as I said, could not load xpcom errors are usually a missing prerequisite. Not sure what else might produce the error and since things are broken before the profile is loaded, I'm pretty out of ideas besides a broken DLL or similar.
Does the screensaver's Cairo Clock run? Just thought of fontconfig being broken and that would be an easy test.
memtest would also be good to run, I usually use a Linux ISO for memtest as they almost all have it, otherwise not sure where to get it and it runs on a bare system with no OS loaded.
Does your machine have any diagnostics, something else you could try.

Andi B.

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Re: Seamonkey fails to start - Couldn't load xpcom
« Reply #14 on: July 14, 2026, 07:32:45 pm »
Quote
As for your SeaMonkey problem, as I said, could not load xpcom errors are usually a missing prerequisite. Not sure what else might produce the error and since things are broken before the profile is loaded, I'm pretty out of ideas besides a broken DLL or similar.

Speculating - running another FF or Thunderbird or 'quick start' before which loads another XUL in memory and not using Libpathstrict?

This problem sounds so familiar but can't remember details unfortunately.