Firefox Crashing on Mac every 5min

July 23, 2009 11:51 AM

Firefox on my iBook keeps crashing :(

Not sure what has triggered it, but every 5min I get the spinny beach ball of death in FireFox 3.5.1 on my iBook G4 (OSX 10.5.6).

I've tried disabling every extension but it still dies and requires a force quit and restart.

Any suggestions? Sorry for being so brief - but I have to.

posted by lemonfridge to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I'd run a default optimize by Yasu.

Then I'd try a PowerPC optimized version of Firefox.
posted by sharkfu at 12:28 PM on July 23

Is it five minutes consistently (not one minute sometimes and ten another)? Does it crash even if you leave it on a blank tab (with no other tabs open)? If you hold the Option key while Firefox starts, you should be able to use a blank profile, which might remove the problem.

In the meantime, your iBook will still run Safari, which will likely not crash on your while you troubleshoot this problem.
posted by Doug Stewart at 12:53 PM on July 23

Try completely erasing the program and its preferences. Then, download firefox again.

Other fun browsers to check out in the meantime are Opera, Shiira, icab, camino, stainless, chrome. I think Camino is great, by the way.

It's probably not the case if it is just firefox acting up, but open disk utility from the applications -> utilities folder and make sure the S.M.A.R.T. status is verified in the lower right hand corner of the window. (You might have to select your harddrive first). If the S.M.A.R.T. status reads failing then it means that your harddrive is dying.
posted by oceano at 2:04 PM on July 23

Been testing. So far every time it has crash in between 4:40 and 4:50. I've been timing from when the window first opens to when I see the beach ball.

I thought it might be the X Marks extension as that is the only extension I can think of that would do something on a regular basis. Tried disabling it - nothing. Tried performing a sync manually, works fine.

Holding down the option key? You mean Ctrl?

How does one go about COMPLETELY removing an application from a Mac? I've been wanting to get rid of MSN for ages so that I can reinstall it and get rid of contacts I can't delete! It always loads an existing contact list!! Grrr!
posted by lemonfridge at 5:06 PM on July 23

My experience has been that is that as macs age, different programs will start to "hiccup" and get the spinning beach ball of doom. Here are directions to uninstall firefox specifically. With macs, you can usually just drag the app to the trash, but there may be a few files remaining in the /Library directory. AppDelete (free), AppZap, and Cleanapp are programs you can download to completely uninstall a program. Oh, and the option key is also called the alt key and can be found in between the control and command (apple) keys.
posted by oceano at 5:33 PM on July 23

Agree with deleting/reinstalling Firefox. In addition to the app itself, in your User/Library/Preferences, there is the org.mozilla.firefox.plist file. Trash that, too.

What do you have set as your home page in Firefox? There could be something on that page that is causing this problem.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:08 AM on July 24

Strangely it just updated and now it's working fine. Panic over! :)
posted by lemonfridge at 8:33 AM on July 24

Holding down the option key? You mean Ctrl?

The alt/option key, on my keyboard it's the one between control and command.
posted by 6550 at 10:36 AM on July 24