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Firefox slow on startup

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  • 10 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Melkiah

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Hello everyone, i need some help with an issue i've been recently noticing when opening firefox. Whenever i try to open it without any previous tab opened, it takes a long time to start up (~10 seconds). Never had this problem before. After starting up everything works fine and even opening new tabs/windows is done instantly, the issue is experienced only when firefox is closed and needs to start.

I tried disabling my antivirus and the problem persists. I tried disabling hardware acceleration and the problem persists. I tried starting firefox whit a clean, new profile and the problem persists. I tried reinstalling firefox and the problem persists. I tried starting firefox in safe mode and seems to work fine, but when i try to run it normally while disabling all plug-ins and extensions (running default theme) the problem shows up again.

Any idea what else i could try to fix this annoying thing?

Hello everyone, i need some help with an issue i've been recently noticing when opening firefox. Whenever i try to open it without any previous tab opened, it takes a long time to start up (~10 seconds). Never had this problem before. After starting up everything works fine and even opening new tabs/windows is done instantly, the issue is experienced only when firefox is closed and needs to start. I tried disabling my antivirus and the problem persists. I tried disabling hardware acceleration and the problem persists. I tried starting firefox whit a clean, new profile and the problem persists. I tried reinstalling firefox and the problem persists. I tried starting firefox in safe mode and seems to work fine, but when i try to run it normally while disabling all plug-ins and extensions (running default theme) the problem shows up again. Any idea what else i could try to fix this annoying thing?

Chosen solution

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to to see if that helps.


In Firefox Safe mode these changes are effective:

  • all extensions are disabled (about:addons)
  • default theme is used (no persona)
  • userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored (chrome folder)
  • default toolbar layout is used (file: localstore-safe.rdf)
  • Javascript JIT compilers are disabled (prefs: javascript.options.*jit)
    *http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config
  • hardware acceleration is disabled (Options > Advanced > General)
  • plugins are not affected
  • preferences are not affected
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Chosen Solution

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to to see if that helps.


In Firefox Safe mode these changes are effective:

  • all extensions are disabled (about:addons)
  • default theme is used (no persona)
  • userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored (chrome folder)
  • default toolbar layout is used (file: localstore-safe.rdf)
  • Javascript JIT compilers are disabled (prefs: javascript.options.*jit)
    *http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config
  • hardware acceleration is disabled (Options > Advanced > General)
  • plugins are not affected
  • preferences are not affected
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Thanks for your response, a full list of what is disabled during firefox's safe mode is exactly what i needed.

I double checked everything again and even though it didn't seem like it made any difference the first time, disabling hardware acceleration cuts down my load times to about 2-3 seconds so i'm guessing it's an issue with my (recently updated) video drivers. Think i can call this solved, thanks for the help!