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Firefox 5 is slow, unresponsive, hangs constantly

  • 44 replies
  • 1693 have this problem
  • 20 views
  • Last reply by py2k66

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Ever since I upgraded my Windows 7 desktop to Firefox 5 it has been a nightmare! It hangs, freezes, is unresponsive more often than working. I have to us my laptop, still on FF4, to post this or risk being totally grey before I could finish posting. I see by the comments that I am not alone in having this problem, but do not see any offered solution. Do I have to revert to FF4 to use my desktop or is a solution forthcoming?

Ever since I upgraded my Windows 7 desktop to Firefox 5 it has been a nightmare! It hangs, freezes, is unresponsive more often than working. I have to us my laptop, still on FF4, to post this or risk being totally grey before I could finish posting. I see by the comments that I am not alone in having this problem, but do not see any offered solution. Do I have to revert to FF4 to use my desktop or is a solution forthcoming?

All Replies (20)

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yeah, like i click on a link, and it doesnt do anything... only by moving the mouse around does everything suddenly appear.... its like old notepad, when you wanted to select text and scroll down, youd have to move the mouse back end forth or it wouldnt scroll.... its like that, and it really sucks....

im running win7 SP1 FF 5.0

Modified by IDontWannaRegisterToComment

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Suddenly FF5 is cooperating long enough to follow up with my desktop, but I have no real hope it will continue in the future. I have been lucky with past upgrades, but FF6 has been a nightmare! Why does it come and go???

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This is just poisonous rubbish as far as I can see. FF5 is utter crap. It seems to cause problems for other programs, eg YouTube Clip Extractor works, but won't display properly! Task Manager shows massive use of memory - why? Unfortunately I can't go back to FF4 as I upgraded from 3 and, of course, Mozilla have ensured that FF4 is nowhere to be found online and we've got a .0 that 116 of us this week say is horrible.

Furthermore I just agreed to be sent "an email" when the problem is solved. Apparently this means I have "subscribed" to "alerts" and will now be pestered weekly or daily or something.

What is wrong with Mozilla?

If Mozilla think that, after doing this to my PC, I'm 'upgrading' Firefox on the Apple laptop I use for actual work, they are unlucky.

Oh and guess what, Internet Explorer works perfectly on this pc. Yes, perfectly. Sure, it's crap -- but suddenly not as bad as Firefox. EVERYTHING I use Firefox for is crap. That includes the BBC iPlayer, Gmail, following links, Google Search! Google Search is crap now! Only fine using IE.

I'm disgusted that this thing has been released. So many people are reporting problems -- I'm reading about them in newspapers -- I can only conclude Mozilla have developed Microsoft levels of arrogance and decided to stick the thing out while knowing it doesn't work properly.

Thanks a bunch.

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I am also seeing this on Win7 32 and 64 bit, as well as MacOSX.

This seems to happen most right after Firefox loads. If I leave it open for a while it goes away. But when the slowness happens, I can count the seconds between letters I am typing (I type at a good rate).

Also, I am a web developer, so I have a few plugins loaded. (firebug)

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What is going on? I get bugged constantly to upgrade, which has (almost) always been a great experience. Now there are several sites that won't load, which I need. It constantly hangs under to load of tabs I open (20, which I guess is extreme). But will hang on far fewer tabs. Plugins disabled, IPV6 disabled, no other options. How am I supposed to work under these conditions? I love Firefox. Since V1. But now I'm screwed. This is reminiscent of the move to the PluginContainer, which had FF hanging repeatedly. Please, don't make me change browsers!

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Trouble is with Mozilla they are playing the 'chase game', what they want to do is to get a stable adaptable basic browser so that everyone is happy, then they can play around tinkering keeping up with their competitors....

like many others I am getting sick of being their guinea pig, that is what we are!

FF4 & FF5 takes 512mB of RAM if you look at the specs. why is this, and you can expect updates and security fixes so that mean even more resources.

I can't help thinking the Mozilla team are in bad shape right now and I can't see any resolve..

They like to bloat how many downloads they made... but won't tell you the number of un-installs and the number of people leaving!

Never, will I read their hype ever again - I/we will be the judge thank you!

About time Mozilla did something pretty quick instead of playing the 'chase game and using us as guinnea pigs.

Modified by EF80

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I have used Firefox as my browser of choice and its predecessors from Mozilla and before that Netscape, going all the way back to Netscape 2. After upgrading to the latest version, I had not even been using it for 5 minutes before encountering problems along these lines that rendered it unusable. Thanks to this bullshit, I have been forced to switch to Chromium.

There are plenty of little things about its interface that I don't get on with as well as I did with Firefox, but I will have to live with it for the sake of ACTUALLY BEING ABLE TO DO ANYTHING. I have been left with no other option.

I even tried a brand spanking new blank profile with all the default settings, and the very latest version of Flash with no joy.

Unless the Firefox developers get their act together FAST, and sort this crap out, I doubt I will be the last to abandon their browser.

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Dear Mozilla:

Up yours! I'm posting this with Google Chrome (a browser that runs very fast and doesn't crash), does that give you brain-dead Micro$oft wannabes half a clue?????

Modified by JohnL

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This is nuts and I quit. I've used Firefox for years and this is the worst its ever been. Hanging, crashes, speed of a snail. Dead snail.

So I've gone back to using InternetExplorer again, something I swore I would never do. But at least it FUNCTIONS while I research other browsers.

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I was having a problem like this and found I had somehow acquired a huge cache

Under preferences | Advanced | Network | Offline storage

I had the setting Override Automatic cache management = ticked.

Limit cache set to = 15 MB

Despite this it was showing the cache size as around 3 GB

When I cleared it, (with the clear now button) the effect was like upgrading from dial-up to broadband!

Modified by Lanark

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Useful info - I guess that will have to do until they finally address the problem!

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Has anyone gotten a solution I am having the same problem should I just uninstall and go back to FF 4 ?? Or give up on FF completely I really hate to I despise I.E

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Sadly, no reply from Mozilla, but Lanark had a good suggestion, and I have found that, irritating as it may be, if I simply close FF5 and reopen a minute later it behaves for a while. Far from satisfactory situation, but a bit more tolerable.

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Some useful stuff in this link, and a related link within the article. I've bookmarked both. So far today FF5 is behaving, and my system of shutting it down after an hour seems to be keeping it steady, but who knows :-( The idea that certain add-ons and extensions were responsible sounded promising. Since the only one of their top 10 list that I have is Personas it will be easy enough to check. If that is the problem for me I will certainly miss my white wolf but not enough to sacrifice speed.

I think the thing that is p!$$!#& me off right now is that the laptop I used to originally report this problem is now "infected" with FF5 - I didn't get a chance to turn down the upgrade - it installed automatically when I booted it up a couple days ago. I have almost no extensions or add-ons on that machine, however, and so far it has only had one, brief episode of 'lethargy', so there may be something to the theory about FF5 getting bogged down by excessive add-ons.

The one article does note that there are no FF extension police, checking to make sure all the available add-ons and extensions are compatible, so we are responsible for checking ourselves. I tend to be frugal about what I add to my lineup, but may drop a couple, including the purely cosmetic Personas.

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I continue to have hang issues. Not good when I'm attempting to make a purchase or payment. I now notice that I can no longer submit user feedback (via the browser 'Help' section). A notice pops up that I have to have the latest version, which I do (5.0). It would seem that instead of addressing the problem or at least providing some information to users, Mozilla is simply closing the door. I've been awaiting a fix, but believe I'll now simply uninstall Firefox.

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Here is some support for those who have identified old Java Files as a problem. Actually looking at my Add-on Manager made the connection between the "waiting for data transfer.. javascript something in the tattletale and the fact that I had Java Console 6.0.1.11 through .23 all running. I've disabled them all and now the web page downloads are what I expect. I just hope it holds up

Regards -=crl=- Skeptic and a Cynic

Running Win 7 (32 bit) 4 Gig Ram, 2Ghz Dual Intells

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I'm running Windows XP, and since Firefox 4 upgraded itself to version 5, FF no longer works on this machine. I've tried

disabling all extensions setting up a fresh profile reinstalling ff5 reinstalling ff4

Nothing works. All I have to do is go to a website (I've been using Slashdot.org to test) and it hangs midway through loading the page. Click 'Close' and get ...not responding in the titlebar.

It's crashing harder now than when I first upgraded. Then it would work for a few pages and then hang the same way.

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Im so pissed off about the way this FF 5 is running this is crap to every one out there DO NOT DOWN LOAD FF 5 .. it is crap!!!!!! my email has been hijacked by some Canadian drug site and keeps sending spam to my contact list. even after changing my pw 4 times this runs like explorer did in 1998. I wish I never updated FF from 4.1

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After a lot of research (including losing all my opened tabs) I have found a problem to this solution, at least for me. All I had to do was disable hardware acceleration in Tools->Advanced->General.

This worked because if I started Firefox in safe mode (going to Help->Restart with Add-ons Disabled) it would run faster, but disabling all extensions and plugins in normal mode didn't help.

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