How do I fix slow (~3 mins.) firefox startup?
Would appreciate any help with this -
Firefox takes about 3 minutes for me to start up on Windows 7. It used to startup normally initially, but the slow startup problem began a few weeks ago (believe this started with Firefox 54).
I am currently using Firefox 56, 64 bit.
It starts normally (few seconds) only when I run Windows in safe mode with networking. I have looked at previous answers and tried the following. They don't have any impact in my case.
Have tried -
1. Launching Firefox in safe mode 2. Disabling hardware acceleration 3. Complete uninstall and reinstall 4. Deleting and creating a new profile 5. Using Firefox Nightly 6. Adding an exception (the Firefox folder) to my Antivirus
I'm keen on using Firefox, because I see that memory usage and speed has been improving (use it on Ubuntu).
Modified by ray98
All Replies (4)
Would you please take a look at this article and see if there is something there that you haven't tried yet :
Enigma said
Would you please take a look at this article and see if there is something there that you haven't tried yet : Firefox takes a long time to start up
Thank you for the reply. Yes, I have tried these as well.
1. Refresh has not helped. 2. Currently I have the default home page (the built in speed dial). 3. I don't have any extensions apart from the defaults and Firefox doesn't start any faster in its safe mode. 4. I don't believe it is an OS performance issue, since my other browser, Vivaldi, starts fine.
Considering the time already spent in your issue, the quickest step is probably to remove / uninstall all antivirus / security software on your system, either one by one or all at once depending on whether you like to know what caused it, then reboot and retry. Don’t be scared, basically you don’t need it (at least not for Firefox) unless your machine is directly connected to the internet and not within a LAN / behind a router. Something is preventing Firefox to run as it should - the fact that there is no issue in Windows Safe Mode with networking enabled proves it - this could even be as simple as a blocked loopback connection (127.0.0.1) by too tight security/firewall settings.
If things run fine then, you can reinstall security products one by one if needed. You may also be able to run Windows Resource Monitor beforehand to exactly see what is causing delay with regard to disk or network access.
Tonnes said
Considering the time already spent in your issue, the quickest step is probably to remove / uninstall all antivirus / security software on your system, either one by one or all at once depending on whether you like to know what caused it, then reboot and retry. Don’t be scared, basically you don’t need it (at least not for Firefox) unless your machine is directly connected to the internet and not within a LAN / behind a router. Something is preventing Firefox to run as it should - the fact that there is no issue in Windows Safe Mode with networking enabled proves it - this could even be as simple as a blocked loopback connection (127.0.0.1) by too tight security/firewall settings. If things run fine then, you can reinstall security products one by one if needed. You may also be able to run Windows Resource Monitor beforehand to exactly see what is causing delay with regard to disk or network access.
Thanks; as you suggested, I tried running it after uninstalling my security software. However, even with everything unistalled, Firefox continued to start late.
If I'm able to identify the cause of the problem/ come across a fix, I'll post it here.
Modified by ray98