How to deal with "Script stopped responding" in general
I have seen that there are many questions about dealing with unresponsive scripts, scripts that stopped responding, script busy, for various programs. Entering "script stopped responding" produces 1000 results.
So this seems to be a general problem, and is not tied to any program (though my problem lately is gmail).
It's very annoying to have to wait until the script problem gets to the point where all open windows freeze, slow down, move in jerks rather than smoothly, without knowing what is causing the problem, since it seems that a script problem can happen with just about anything you want to do.
What I want to know is whether there is a way to set up some sort of automatic system to deal with it.
Something like "if a script is unresponsive for X amount of time, stop the script". Ideally with that amount of time being less than the amount of time it takes for the unresponsive script to interfere with all functioning.
Or some way to limit its disruption to just the window/application with the problem - so if gmail is having the problem, youtube or nytimes.com will not be affected.
Even an early warning system would be nice, like a message popping up identifying the application with the script issue and that it is going more slowly than it should.
I am no expert, but I am thinking that most of the applications or activities involving scripts should work within a few seconds. If this is the case, a pop up saying, for example "a gmail script has been spazzing out for 15 seconds now".
Basically, anything that sends an alert or that stops the problem before it affects the entire system would be very very helpful.
All Replies (7)
Hello,
The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information. Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.
To Reset Firefox do the following:
- Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
- Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
- Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
- Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.
Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.
Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!
Thank you.
The search engine on this forum is not designed for precision searching: instead of assuming you require all terms, it tries to find articles with any of the terms. But I digress.
How soon before you see the error? If Firefox is working normally and configured with default settings, you should see the warning in about 10 seconds. You can lengthen that period using the setting described in this support article: Warning Unresponsive script - What it means and how to fix it. You also could shorten it, but if it already takes longer than 10 seconds, that probably won't help.
When the problem is that the warning takes forever to come up, then there is something else going on. Recently I had long hangs on all pages that use Flash, followed eventually by an unresponsive script warning. This thread has the story and workaround for that: Flash hangs Firefox (eventually get script continue/stop dialog). (Disable the Flash Player plugin's protected mode. See this support article from Adobe under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?)
Iwonder if this is only a FireFox problem and if changing to another browser will fix this problem. I am rather sick of having the Moon distance effect and if this is a Firefox issue why does it not get fixed - seems this is n issue affecting many users.
Hi auzziewog, what is "the Moon distance effect"?
If you have a problem with Continue/Stop dialogs for scripts, please try the suggestions in this post: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../966517#answer-462078?
Moon distance effect - the lag time for a signal to reach Earth from the moon, when my computer hangs and does not respond, if I type in anything into a search, the letters do not appear for several seconds - this changes after a long while after the unresponsive script pops up and it solves itself somehow however I have to wait for 10-15 minutes before that is settled.
Hi auzziewog, a couple of thoughts on long pauses.
In some cases, this is caused by Firefox waiting on content from the server, or loading some content into a plugin. Other than blocking some extraneous content in pages and setting plugins to "Ask to Activate" (click-to-play) on the Add-ons page, this is a hard problem to solve.
If the problem is a script (the eventual appearance of the dialog suggests that possibility), please see the above reference post.
Perhaps it is a combination of those things, since scripts often run after some other elements are loaded...
Firefox 26.0 javascript UNRESPONSIVE SCRIPT errors. Success
After the Firefox 26 update I started getting javascript "Warning Unresponsive script" dialogue boxes on most sites. "Ok" or cancelling the message both produced long hangs.
If I turned off Javascript in the about:config then my hang problem went away but its not really a solution is it!
After spending AGES following all the advice I could find such as increasing the maximum script processing time allowed, deleting all my addons, running in safe mode, deleting various config .js files, uninstalling rebooting then reinstalling, "reset firefox" as described above, nothing worked. I like Firefox but I was about to dump it for IE11, I was so cheesed off!
However after looking through the about:config again I noticed that although I had reset firefox and I had assumed that all the paramaters had been set to default, actually about 20 of them were STILL NOT on the default settings!!!! Click on the "Status" colum then scroll down the list to be sure! After setting the most likely looking back to default then restarting Firefox there seemed to be no improvement however after a system reboot my problem has gone away, so a try this if all else has failed.
I expect that many people are falling into this hole as although it was under my nose it took me all evening to spot it. Dont ask me why "reset firefox" does not properly reset!
Modified by DominicOsk