I gave up on Firefox 6 until I saw a post which indicated that the speed problem can be solved by deleting the user/roaming folder. I tried it and Firefox is now again the browser I love

Could you clarify a bit more? I renamed (just in case) C:\users\larry\appdata\roaming\Mozilla thinking that was the file you were talking about. All that happened was it created a new folder and I lost all of my favorites. Was I at the wrong place?

Yeah...this is insane...I switched from IE to Firefox a few years back and have loved it...I shouldn't have to clean the cache 4 times a day...

I can't stand scrolling down a page and it hangs for seconds that seem an eternity....loads are slower...hell, as I type this the typing is hanging on four words prior....ugghhh.

Solution I've toyed with that worked for me: I turned off "Hardware Acceleration When Available" under Firefox --> Options --> Options --> Advanced Tab --> General Tab

I also disabled the following Plugins under Firefox --> Add-ons --> Plugins: Microsoft Office 2010 Plugins (2 and may be Office 2007 etc. for others); Silverlight; Windows Live Photo Gallery

I then right clicked the Firefox icon on the taskbar and unpinned it. Went to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox" folder and turned on "run as administrator" by right clicking the application icon and selecting properties --> compatibility tab --> run this program as an administrator check box...apply settings...click OK. Then right click the icon again and pin it back to the task-bar. You'll get an annoying pop-up from Windows about approvals...follow the prompts and disable these warnings.

I didn't clear the cache as I wanted to verify the potential fix with these changes I had performed...but I did restart Firefox...seems MUCH faster now...not sure if either/or of the solutions I provided fixed the issue for me.

I also noticed that the navigation of the Firefox icon within the All Programs link under the Start/Windows Icon in the bottom left changed from the "C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs" folder to the actual location of Firefox "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox" folder...sneaky bastards. Not sure if this was due to a Microsoft update or their sly means of tracking Firefox users...but I'll be sure to keep an eye on it.

Seems to no longer hang when scrolling and loads faster on forums...for now, but the problem seemed to exasperate the longer an instance of Firefox ran before the solution above...I'll update again with thoughts on this being resolved. For now, it seems to be the same Firefox I fell in love with :)

Other Solution to annoying problem regarding the two instances of Firefox in the taskbar after updating from several versions ago:

After you click on Firefox in the taskbar and a new instance appears, right-click on the original instance and select unpin from the taskbar, then right-click on the instance still open (the second instance) and pin to taskbar. Close Firefox and click on the icon in the taskbar and smile at the results :) This may be required after updating Firefox each time...dunno.

I had the same problem. Gave up and removed FF6 and reloaded 5. When I checked the version (tools>about) it was 5.01 but FF automatically "updated" to 6. since then my load speeds ave been fine!! Maybe that's your answer. download/save FF 5, remove FF6 form you system, load FF5 and let it update. Don't remove your profile information or you will lose you information.(there's a prompt when removing FF6 for that)

Appreciate your response . . . I went through the same thing, and it helped SOMEWHAT. Strange thing that I noticed was that if I highlighted the URL in the address bar and hit ENTER again, the URL popped up instantly!

You have to keep in mind that several sites nowadays are flooded with ad-click revenue links. I've had trouble with specific sites before while previously having no issues.

For instance Joystiq.com hangs on *.aol.com Site would always hang on loading with *.aol.com referrals I just blocked all of AOL...who the hell visits their site nowadays anyway :) Site loads as expected now. If you wanted to block just the culprit and allow the rest of AOL you could use this filter: ||*.*.aol.com , ||^.aol.com , ^.aol.com ...or similar variation. http://adblockplus.org/en/filters

If you pay attention to the "waiting on ....." in the lower left or right corners when a page is loading and it hangs on something longer than you think it would...you can add this to your custom filter in Adblock Plus...and voila...no more issues on that site until they recode their links.

You can also right-click and view "page source" and see what is loading in there and remove all of the ad related sites by custom filter in Adblock Plus and stop giving revenue to sites you visit :) I don't much like making others money...

You can utilize Adblock Plus to greatly increase load speeds by preventing them from loading in the first place...referring to it as an ad blocker is unfortunate...as it will block anything.

Which site are you having issues with? I'll visit the site and see if I'm having the same issues.

I am having issues with most sites, though installing 5.x and then letting it reinstall 6 seems to have helped somewhat. Interesting thing I have found, however, is that when it "hangs up," if I highlight the URL it is going to and press enter, ALMOST ALWAYS it opens instantly! (Just for fun, I waited 3 minutes on one site before trying this . . . all I had before hitting enter was a blank page saying it was transferring data. When I hit enter, I got instant gratification!) Several of the hangups are when I am inside a secure site and am switching from one URL (like bank accounts) to another (like bill-pay) within the same bank's site. Again, almost always if I highlight the new URL and press enter, it loads instantly. Very confusing to a hardware guy like me. It is almost as though it is stuck somewhere, but redoing the URL releases it.

There can and should be improvements to the quality control process for releases. FF5 was short lived because it probably was too buggy. So most people went from FF4 to FF6.

Nested setTimeout functions appear to run slowly in FF6 compared to IE9 in win7. FF4 was just as fast, or even faster than IE8 on xp.

Code that ran well in FF4, IE8 and IE9, broke in FF6. The issue appear to be priority sequencing of javascript parts for execution: document/inline events, user or multiple event handlers, and setTimeout functions.

My experience with Firefox is based on development efforts on a proprietary remote corporate desktop framework software that worked in IE8 and FF4, and now works in IE9 and FF6.

Safari 5.1 is faster than FF6 and IE9, but it has a historical and significant select / dropdown-list behaviour bug, when running the same code that works in FF and IE. At one time, in the past, Safari was identical to Firefox, in terms of having idential rendering bugs.

Nevertheless, Firefox 4 was a significant achievement and I hope the issues with FF6 are resolved.

Appreciate the information. Glad it isn't just me. In the meantime, I have downloaded Chrome until Firefox becomes usable again! Hope it isn't too long because I really don't care for Chrome, but like it better than IE!

Weeks of problems and disabling the hardware acceleration improved it instantly.

It hasn't solved it completely, the pages are loading faster but still hanging and some images are still not loading but more than before.

Thank you and a shame this is either not being patched or the problem made more well known officially.

Firefox 6 hangs for me when loading all URLs. The "fix" for me is to disable FLASH plugin, then the browser works great. Unfortunately, with this "fix" I am unable to view any FLASH content.

Thanks for the heads-up. I have tried this, and so far, it has only hung up on one site. Perhaps there is hope. If this turns out to be the real solution, I would hope that someone from Mozilla is monitoring these and will make some effort to correct it. It appears that I am not the only one with this issue!

After trying this for a few days, I am afraid that it did NOT solve my issue. Oh well . . . such is life. Wish Mozilla had not ruined a great thing!