Comments on: I want my Firefox!

Question: I want my Firefox!

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:35:36 -0800

Why is Firefox so sluggish on my laptop?

I love Firefox. I use it at work. I used to use it at home on my old desktop (which died).

In September of last year, I bought a shiny new Asus laptop which I absolutely love. But every time I've tried to download and use Firefox on it, the response time has been frustrating to the point where I've uninstalled it.

What's going on? I have to wait ten seconds or more each time I click anything before the browser will respond. Often the title bar has the Windows "not responding" message in it.

Any ideas? I'm running Windows XP Home. Save me from IE!

By: cmiller

cmiller — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:17:28 -0800

What are the differences between your work machine and your laptop? Amount of memory? OS? Disc speed? Virtual memory? Virus scanner?

Offhand, I'd suspect a virus, a virus scanner, or low RAM.

Find any Firefox preferences/cache directory and remove it. Does that help?

By: Rabulah

Rabulah — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:23:41 -0800

Try running Firefox in safe mode*. It'll disable any extensions you're using, and should speed it up.

*I mean Firefox safe mode, not Windows safe mode. :)

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:35:36 -0800

Try clicking something and see if the disk activity light comes on. If that happens every time on slow responses, then it means the system is thrashing.

By: SpookyFish

SpookyFish — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:37:24 -0800

There are a number of things to try for common hangs, particularly those due to software conflicts, here.

By: trouserbat

trouserbat — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:09:38 -0800

See if loading a site by IP (eg. 74.53.68.130 for MF) is significantly
faster. If so, it's a domain name resolution issue: Your computer is
asking, "what IP # is metafilter.com?" but for some reason there is a
hiccough before it can act on the result.

If that's not the problem, definately try disabling plugins. Are other browsers faster?

And it could be swapping, firefox can suck up amazing amounts of memory.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:44:17 -0800

Thanks for the advice so far. I uninstalled again and reinstalled and started in "safe" mode. Problem is still there.

To be a little more specific, the problem is not with loading pages. They load at a normal rate. What happens is that after a page is loaded, the Firefox interface won't respond to anything for the next ten seconds or so. If I cursor over a link, the mouse doesn't change. If I click on the menu bar, nothing happens.

To answer a couple of questions:

Intel Core Duo T2400 w/ 1G memory
IE runs normally and is much faster to respond

I'm going to try some things on the page SpookyFish linked to, but if anyone has other suggestions, they're welcome.

Thanks again!

By: liesbyomission

liesbyomission — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:45:04 -0800

Perhaps try Portable Firefox?

By: trouserbat

trouserbat — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:20:52 -0800

t1.5: During that ten-ish seconds, does firefox max out the CPU usage? (I forget what the dialog is called, the Windows equivalent of Unix's top(1)

I'm not sure what to make of it, whether it does or not, but narrowing down the cause will help diagnose it. Good luck.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:48:27 -0800

Thanks again everyone! I went and installed the latest nightly build (called "Minefield"!), and created a new profile.

I'm not sure which one did it, but now Firefox is behaving normally. Whew! I'm so glad to be using Firefox again!

Cheers.

By: kenchie

kenchie — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:27:53 -0800

Don't you just love a happy ending?!?!