Poor Firefox behavior

[Traxan]

Hoping someone here can help. Firefox has become extremely unusable as late. It will randomly slow to a crawl and the drive activity light will go on and stay solid, like a massive amount of disk activity is taking place. The task manager shows the Firefox process bouncing from 3% to 20%. Eventually I get frustrated enough to kill the process.

Chrome never does this. I don't use IE enough to know if it does either. Can anyone shed some light, or do you need more info? This is a Core i7 machine, Win 7-64, 8GB memory and a 1.5TB C: drive.

 

[mb]

With the lack of info it sounds more like user error.

 

[universeis42]

Go to Task Manager, Click on the Performance Tab, and then Click on Resource Monitor.
On your Resource Monitor, go to the "Disk" tab. You can check there what is hogging your hard drive, whether it be Firefox or something else.

 

[WelshBloke]

With the lack of info it sounds more like user error.

Thats helpful.

OP, what add ons do you have installed?

 

[mb]

Thats helpful.

OP, what add ons do you have installed?

As helpful as the OP. It's like saying I'm having trouble with my car, and I use premium gas and Micheline tires and have leather seats. Can you help?

 

[pcslookout]

As helpful as the OP. It's like saying I'm having trouble with my car, and I use premium gas and Micheline tires and have leather seats. Can you help?

Yep.

Anyway how many Add-ons do you have installed and which ones please? How many tabs do you use?

 

[mb]

Yep.

Anyway how many Add-ons do you have installed and which ones please? How many tabs do you use?

Also need to know what websites he is visiting when it happens. If it's a flash website does he have the latest version of flash? And if he's actually tried anything to resolve the problem like running a clean install with no add ons. Or even check for malware (more uncommon for FF but can happen). Also need to know if he's using 3.6.12 or a 4.0 beta.

 

[pcslookout]

Also need to know what websites he is visiting when it happens. If it's a flash website does he have the latest version of flash? And if he's actually tried anything to resolve the problem like running a clean install with no add ons. Or even check for malware (more uncommon for FF but can happen). Also need to know if he's using 3.6.12 or a 4.0 beta.

Actually I figured out what causes a lot of the Firefox poor performance. It was quite funny what it was too. No not Flash but yes that can do it but not the main cause.

 

[Traxan]

Ok, back with some answers. I don't use that many tabs, and it can happen with as few as 3 open tabs.

I don't have many add-ons. Xmarks, TinEye, Skype, Ad-Block, and Google Toolbar.

Waiting for it to happen again and I'll open the disk monitor.

 

[Traxan]

Also need to know what websites he is visiting when it happens. If it's a flash website does he have the latest version of flash? And if he's actually tried anything to resolve the problem like running a clean install with no add ons. Or even check for malware (more uncommon for FF but can happen). Also need to know if he's using 3.6.12 or a 4.0 beta.

Happens with any and all Web sites. It's not just the site load. It's clicking tabs to switch tabs or even trying to open folders in the bookmark toolbar or the pulldown menu with links. It's no one single use case, it happens across the board.

I am using 3.6.12. It happened with 3.5.x too.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

does it happen in safe mode for firefox too?
you may just have to delete your profile and set it up again.

 

[Traxan]

I'll try safe mode.

It went crazy on me again. I could not type in this response and had to close it. It kept freezing, going gray, saying Not Responding, etc. Here are Resource Monitor caps.

http://yfrog.com/eqfrozej

http://yfrog.com/48froze2j

 

[Chiefcrowe]

yep, it looks as though you'll have to back up your bookmarks, and completely uninstall it, and delete all profiles / folders associated and reinstall.

I had a glitch recently and after doing that it was fine. faster even!

 

[Traxan]

Ok Chief thanks.

 

[Traxan]

That seems to have been the fix. It was a nuisance going through that reinstallation and adding passwords and whatnot, but it has not had that error in the last two days. Problem solved, thanks for the help.

 

[Leros]

Firefox has been getting slower and slower. Most people I know have switched to Chrome. I've been having problems with certain sites under Chrome, so I use IE9.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Well, I think that Firefox 4 will be much faster.

 

[Emulex]

chrome9 smokes firefox 4.0b7 .

 

[dangs]

Firefox had been going really slow for me too recently, now I just switched to chrome and hadn't had any problems. But, I will switch back to mozilla once it runs smoothly again.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Firefox 4.0beta7 is really slow with flash. I listen to a streaming radio station, and when I open the flash site in IE, I get around 30-40% CPU usage on my TF-20 1.6Ghz single-core AMD CPU. In FF, I get 100% CPU time pinned for quite some time.

Those IBM ads that slow down the browser, when I'm using IE, they don't interfere with my usage of the browser. In FF, they hang the browser for a second or two, and it doesn't respond or scroll.

 

[lxskllr]

Firefox 4.0beta7 is really slow with flash. I listen to a streaming radio station, and when I open the flash site in IE, I get around 30-40% CPU usage on my TF-20 1.6Ghz single-core AMD CPU. In FF, I get 100% CPU time pinned for quite some time.

Those IBM ads that slow down the browser, when I'm using IE, they don't interfere with my usage of the browser. In FF, they hang the browser for a second or two, and it doesn't respond or scroll.

It's not nearly that bad for me. With a Flash radio player open, I'm about 3/4 usage of my dual core, but I also have my folding client open. The usage doesn't seem significantly higher than just the folding and other crap I have open.

 

[pcslookout]

Firefox 4.0beta7 is really slow with flash. I listen to a streaming radio station, and when I open the flash site in IE, I get around 30-40% CPU usage on my TF-20 1.6Ghz single-core AMD CPU. In FF, I get 100% CPU time pinned for quite some time.

Those IBM ads that slow down the browser, when I'm using IE, they don't interfere with my usage of the browser. In FF, they hang the browser for a second or two, and it doesn't respond or scroll.

I hate flash and always will. Your right though that it works better in IE though and I don't know why. Guess adobe supports it more or wrote it better for IE ? I don't know. I wish I knew.