A few quick ideas (in the order I'd try them):

• Try clearing your cache. It's possible that some of your cache files are corrupted and Firefox is choking on them.
• Try disabling the Flash plugin. My experience with Flash in Linux has been less than stellar, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's causing problems. If it turns out that Flash is the issue, you should try grabbing the newest 10.2 alpha/beta and see if that fixes it.
• Try opening Firefox in safe mode. That will disable your extensions and many customized settings.
• Try starting a new profile (make sure to keep the old one). There could be something wrong with your current profile (which contains all of your user-specific data).

This stuff will obviously be a pain to test if it's only happening once every day or two, but that's all I can think of. Best of luck getting it fixed, and with any luck someone else will have a more specific fix.

Hi grantheaslip,

Thanks for the reply...the cache gets a firm clean (I suppose cleaning the /.mozilla cache will be enough) and I'll keep an eye on what sites I'm on when it happens. If there is some Flash, I'm sure what to do...

Let's hope I dont have to do anything drastic...I did do a re-install, but to no avail. I thought some debug code was still present in the current version, but that seems to be a loose end.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thor

Hi everyone reading this thread - the answer was quite simple : clean up! ;)

I had a download list a mile (and a half) long, every time I fired up Firefox, it loaded (and possibly sorted) that list slowing down, until that list was loaded/sorted.

I cleaed up the "act" and "it" did not happen again...

Thanks for all that read-and-meditated on this, and the ones that replied!

Wellness

Thor

That's interesting--I think I figured out exactly problem a few days ago, but completely forgot about this question. Whenever I started a download, Firefox would slow down a bunch, which seemed to be because it was trying to process the icons for my (long) list. Did you have your downloads folder pointed at an external drive as well?

Nope, the list was in the .mozilla/firefox/???default/ folder as downloads.sqlite. I copied it to a safe spot and deleted the entries (from the interface) and it seems to be ok now...

The downloads folder is in my user folder, so everything is local...

I observed the behaviour of the downloads window and noticed the thing settle as the "activitity" stopped, the rest was putting two and two together.

Nice detail : I'd keep the list as a reference of my downloads...it can be browsed with sqlitebrowser...