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Firefox infinte hang on loading any site, doesn't fully shut down

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This is happening VERY frequently, far too often to tolerate, yet not reproducible. Maybe about 1 time per day or so, approximately. I go to refresh a web page, and suddenly all that happens is that i get the little circling icon - infinitely. Once it happens, it happens with any web site, in all tabs. Yet, internet is connected and working in other applications, and same web sites as cannot refresh in Firefox are fine in other browsers. Firefox itself is NOT hung, as i can change tabs, drop down menus, etc. All that is hung is refreshing any web site. No error message occurs.

If i click the X to exit Firefox, after "shutting all tabs", the following occurs. Firefox will not restart. Looking in the task manager, there is one Firefox process still running. I have to manually kill it before Firefox will restart. Once i restart Firefox, it works fine for a while...until it happens again.

Somebody suggested i clear the cache and cookies, which i did. That fixes the issue temporarily (but no better than just killing the process and re-starting), but it then continues to happen after a little while.

Thanks if you have any suggestions. I wanted to leave Chrome as they disabled my add-ins and required that all add-ins come from the Google store. Not acceptable! But, with Firefox behaving like this, i cannot yet adopt Firefox. Help!

This is happening VERY frequently, far too often to tolerate, yet not reproducible. Maybe about 1 time per day or so, approximately. I go to refresh a web page, and suddenly all that happens is that i get the little circling icon - infinitely. Once it happens, it happens with any web site, in all tabs. Yet, internet is connected and working in other applications, and same web sites as cannot refresh in Firefox are fine in other browsers. Firefox itself is NOT hung, as i can change tabs, drop down menus, etc. All that is hung is refreshing any web site. No error message occurs. If i click the X to exit Firefox, after "shutting all tabs", the following occurs. Firefox will not restart. Looking in the task manager, there is one Firefox process still running. I have to manually kill it before Firefox will restart. Once i restart Firefox, it works fine for a while...until it happens again. Somebody suggested i clear the cache and cookies, which i did. That fixes the issue temporarily (but no better than just killing the process and re-starting), but it then continues to happen after a little while. Thanks if you have any suggestions. I wanted to leave Chrome as they disabled my add-ins and required that all add-ins come from the Google store. Not acceptable! But, with Firefox behaving like this, i cannot yet adopt Firefox. Help!

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Hello,

Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that turns off some settings, disables most add-ons (extensions and themes).

If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:

  • In Firefox 29.0 and above, click the menu button New Fx Menu, click Help Help-29 and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
  • In previous Firefox versions, click on the Firefox button at the top left of the Firefox window and click on Help (or click on Help in the Menu bar, if you don't have a Firefox button) then click on Restart with Add-ons Disabled.

If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:

  • On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
  • On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
    (you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)

When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
Safe Mode Fx 15 - Win

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.

To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.