Why Does Firefox Keep Crashing on Certain Pages

November 14, 2009 1:32 PM

What is causing Firefox to crash when I scroll to a specific area of specific pages?

I'm running:

• Firefox 3.5.5
• Mac OS 10.6.2
• 1Password 2.11.1
• Adblock Plus 1.1.1Flashblock 1.5.11.2
• FoxyProxy 2.14
• Phoenity Modern 0.8.09.07.17
Everytime I try to login to Google Adsense, the browser crashes hard so that the browsing session can't be recovered when I relaunch Firefox. Every time I go to any of the home listing pages on Redfin For Instance, and scroll down to just past the bottom of the map area, the browser crashes hard. If I login to another user account with a fresh Firefox install, I have no problems, so it seems to be tied to something in my default profile. I tried clearing cache, deleting any Google cookies (rather not delete all cookies if possible), turning off all of the extensions, fixing permissions, rebooting the computer. None of that seems to work. I tried viewing source on one of those redfin pages, but didn't see anything in the area of the page I'm scrolling to that might account for it. The map is from Google, which would tie into the Google adsense problem if that was it, but it happens after I scroll past the bottom edge of the map, and I don't get the problem if I go directly to Google Maps. If I scroll fast enough to get past it and down to the bottom of the page, the browser doesn't crash, so it seems like there's some invisible image or something that is getting loaded. Short of nuking the profile entirely (which I'd like to avoid), what else could I try to fix this. If I do have to nuke the profile entirely, is there a good way to back up my settings and bookmarks?

posted by willnot to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Not sure, but it happens for me on this tumblr Arrested
Development site if that helps anyone.
posted by backwards guitar at 3:52 PM on November 14, 2009

All those sites work fine for me.
Firefox 3.5.5 on XP with a bunch of extensions.

Try disabling all your extensions and enabling them one at a time.
Try re creating your user profile folder.
Try starting in safe mode.
posted by PowerCat at 3:58 PM on November 14, 2009

If I do have to nuke the profile entirely, is there a good way to back up my settings and bookmarks?

Given that busted settings (often busted by extensions) are most often the reason you actually need to nuke the profile, it's usually better to rebuild those by hand after creating a new, clean profile.

Bookmarks can be copied from your old profile using the Backup and Restore thing in the Bookmarks Manager. Don't actually delete your old profile until you've sucked all the goodness out of it.
posted by flabdablet at 7:33 PM on November 14, 2009

Seems I had a corrupt font. Once I got that out of there, my problem went away.
posted by willnot at 11:58 PM on November 14, 2009