I don't expect Firefox to spend 30 seconds loading a page vs. 2 seconds for Chrome.

I would not expect that to happen, 30s vs 2s !! Something is sadly wrong with your Firefox setup. (Firebug would be one way to check timings, but that is a tool that can cause problems, and should --in my opinion-- not be left enabled unecessarily,)

If you want to try to help yourself maybe solutions can be found. First a bit of background info:

It would be nice if Firefox could work with dozens of extensions all enabled and active, and no doubt it can sometimes, but at the least that could be expected to slow things down slightly. If for instance you have multiple tabs with video, again Firefox may start to suffer.

Firefox's safe mode
is not intended as a basic method of operation, it is more of a troubleshooting option used when trying to track down problems.

Submitted Crash reports
people do try to analyse some of these, but not surprisingly not all reports receive attention. For a Crash to receive attention it is usually necessary for a bug to be filed relating to that type of crash. To be honest if a crash is not reproducible it is unlikely to receive attention unless it affects a very large number of users.

Multiple profiles as an alternative to alternative browsers
This is considered an advanced topic and not for instance covered in the KB support articles, but it may be the way to go, rather than continually enabling and disabling software extensions set up profiles required for differing work tasks. There is also Firefox Portable which is a relatively painless method of using an additional separate Firefox browser.

Firefox developers are now working continuously on making Firefox faster and optimising its memory usage, an advantage of the fast release cycles is that these improvements can be sent out as soon as they are tested and working.

What is the site that takes 2 seconds in chrome and 30 seconds in Firefox ?

If you would actually like to address and attempt to solve some of your problems rather than just comment please say so, I obviously have ideas that may help and no doubt others do also.

Thank you for your offer of help.

I understand the difficulty of fixing problems like this, which are intermittent. The issue for me is that I'm not doing anything different from what I've done almost since I started using Firefox (ver. 1). I have certainly not changed anything significant in the past 6 months. IOW, I have not added any new extensions or plugins - although I have upgraded them all as I have upgraded Windows (x64) regularly.

I do use multiple profiles for different versions of Firefox - specifically to deal with upgrade issues - but since this problem has now spanned 3 versions, well, that's not an option anymore.

I am guessing that there is some kind of memory problem since Firefox has occasionally crashed right after loading - or even when I'm not doing anything with it, just sitting on a page.

One other thing re the page retrieval. Sometimes, when a page is taking forever to start loading, if I stop the load then restart it, the page will be retrieved. I've tried Y-Slow, but it can't see anything until something starts to load and the problem is that nothing is getting retrieved for Y-Slow to see.

The one constant seems to be that once I have had a crash, more crashes will follow. After a crash, I will clear the disk cache. I've tried intermittently clearing the memory and disk caches to prevent a crash. Doesn't seem to help. (I suspect it might help to reboot the computer after a Firefox crash to get back to some pristine point but that's about a five minute process which would just add to the disruption.)

I almost always have 1-4 applications open when I am using Firefox. They are the same applications I have always used and don't think any have been upgraded in years. I've tried loading Firefox before I load anything else. I've tried loading Firefox after I've loaded everything else. Neither option seems to make a difference.

The max open apps: Lotus Word Pro 9.1, Word 2000, Notepad++ (up to date), WinSCP. Don't ask. I have reasons for using these particular applications.

The worst web sites, where I am now using Chrome: http://www.caracoltv.com/producciones [open tabs come from a selection on this page] http://rederecord.r7.com/ [open tabs come from a selection of programs]

Both are sites where I routinely open 3-5 tabs at once. Note again. I have been doing this for a long time with multiple versions of Firefox. Chrome handles the 3-5 tabs with no problem. But since Firefox 9.1, even loading one tab from either of these sites in Firefox can take longer than loading 5 tabs. Yes, the pages I'm loading are full of graphics and or video but Firefox used to handle them with little trouble.

I tried the two links you provided and did not see any problems [1]. Lets see if we can improve performance on your setup.

Loading speed
As you are happy using multiple Firefox profile I suggest as a trial for when using those two problematic sites that you create a new clean Firefox profile. Install FlashPlayer on that profile.

Now when trying those sites use the new profile. With any luck the speed will improve dramatically from the 30s per page you were previously seeing. The next step will be looking for the important change.

Crashes
It is much simpler to troubleshoot safe mode crashes, try and do whatever browsing you can in safemode, if Firefox then crashes navigate to about:crashes and paste the Crash ID (or a couple if you get more than one crash) into your next message. If you are not getting crashes in safe-mode at least it narrows down the problem areas.

• see firefox crashes

If Firefox will not crash in safe mode also try in the new profile as suggested above, do you get crashes now with just FlashPlayer installed. (If so ensuring plugincontainer is in use should reduce browser crashes to Flash crashes). If you get plugin crashes please submit those crashes. Then please paste Crash IDs into your message.

• see the adobe flash plugin has crashed

[1] trial of links

• I tried links http://www.caracoltv.com/producciones & http://rederecord.r7.com/
• I only tried the two as tabs one after the other, but did not try a group of video links from those sites.
• first site took almost 3 seconds to load the Dom ( but >1s was connecting and waiting)
• second site took about 1/2s
• I did at random choose a video link on one of those websites and it played ok using FlashPlayer

If you have literally dozens of add-ons, you might want to see if any of those are slowing things down. Some extensions seem to cause problems.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions
• https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

Do you also keep a large history?

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile

There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.

If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

John99 Thanks for getting me unstuck. I hadn't realized that I was assuming both issues (speed and crash) were tied together. They may be, but I can test the speed issue without much affecting my work by setting up a profile that will, as closely as possible, mimic my Chrome setup for the two web sites I cited which most reliably give me speed problems.

Re the crashing, I'm not sure how useful Safe Mode will be. The problem is intermittent. It occurs while I am working (the net is my workplace not my playpen), and I'm not sure how much if any of what I do can be done in safe mode.

But I'll start with the speed issue.

Unfortunately, I've got two other computer problems (they always come in threes, right), totally unrelated, but also needing attention.

I'll post my progress. And thanks again for the kick in the pants.

finitarry & cor-el: I did, when the crashes started, disable all the plug-ins and extensions that I had most recently updated with no effect. Then I started looking at extensions that I thought might have an affect on speed/crashes & individually disabled them. No effect. Obviously, I never got down to barebones because I can't do my job, at least not efficiently, without the extensions & plugins. (I long ago dropped NoScript and Ghostery because both hurt performance. I've considered disabling Ad-block but that will be a last resort.)

And given the number of extensions and plug-ins I have, even using a binary test method for selectively disabling them (disable half, disable half of half, etc.) can take a very long time unless of course I get into the 4-5 crashes/hour mode.

As I said in my reply to John99, I'm going to start with the speed issue since that will be the easiest and least disruptive and see if that gets me anywhere.

Crash IDs from a safe mode crash are the ones most likely to help if it is a Firefox problem. Any crash IDs may be helpful as long as they are very recent. They could contain info that someone finds insightful. May I suggest you paste a couple of the most recent Crash IDs into your next reply.

Well, Firefox 12 just came out. I created a new, completely clean profile. (Had no idea how many plug-ins Firefox installs automatically). No extensions. Zip. Nada. I imported my bookmarks and deleted 90% of them. Chose loading 3 tabs simultaneously from two of the sites I'm now using Chrome for.

Version 12 is SLOW. Slower than 11 with everything installed. So slow it is unusable. I noticed searches for ad sites like double-click in the progress section, so I decided to add Ad-block. Took me 20 seconds just to get to Firefox's addon site - from within the Tools menu. And I gave up after 30 seconds when it couldn't even download ad-block(stalled about 5% in.)

Now, I do not have a fast DSL connection. But I am comparing Firefox 12 with as little in it as possible to Firefox 11 which is loaded - to say nothing of Chrome which is, admittedly, pretty bare bones.

Meanwhile, the crashes with Firefox 11 continue. I've had as many as 3 in 10 minutes. I had noticed that my Currency Converter had Superfish enabled so I got rid of the extension and think it speeded up things a little bit in Firefox 11 but nothing seems to be helping the crashes.

In addition to loading an average of 3-6 tabs at once, I move among them very quickly. I'll take a look at a page while it is loading, maybe copy some text and go on to the next page or open a new tab from a link. I started thinking that maybe Firefox now needs me to wait until a page is fully loaded before I do anything and I am trying that now but without much hope.

Remember, I've been using Firefox since version 1. And I've been visiting the same or similar web sites, with the same or similar number of tabs open, with the same activities. The web has changed. Page designs have changes Versions of everything have been updated. But I've had a stable computer system (Windows 7, x64) for two years. No major changes in applications. Just the usual upgrades of Firefox, its add-ons, and Windows. But Version 8 was the last stable version of Firefox I had. It was a bit slow/sluggish, generally speaking, but not unusable and it rarely crashed.

If Chrome could accurately import my Firefox booksmarks - which it can't - I'd honestly consider switching in spite of all the things I can't do with Chrome. Just to not have to deal with so many crashes.

It is difficult to understate how disappointed I am. I honestly wonder if this speeded up development cycle is to blame.

If you have submitted crash reports then please post the IDs of one or more crash reports (bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx). You can find the IDs of the submitted crash reports on the about:crashes page. You can open the about:crashes page via the location bar, like you open a website.

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mozilla_Crash_Reporter
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Mozilla+Crash+Reporter

If Firefox is slow then there can be a problem with the current profile or a problem with security software that doesn't allow the new version.

You can also do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

• http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
• http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
• http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
• http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

• http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/solutions?qid=208280684

See also:

• "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked

One other thing you could check is the number of max connections. Allowing fewer of them has fixed slowdowns for some people.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.max-connections