I have found in the past month or two Firefox has become incredibly unstable for me.
In the past two months I have found Firefox to be incredibly unstable. I am currently running Firefox 26 on Windows 7 64bit. Essentially what will happen is the browser will get hung up trying to load any sites. I can open new tabs and they just show they are loading forever. Tabs that were already open do the same.
When I check IE it loads sites just fine and my other programs that utilize internet connections are not affected. Sometimes just closing Firefox and opening it again works.
This is where the second issue arises. Many of the times when I close Firefox it continues running in the background so when I try to open it again it gives me a dialog box that it is already running but not responding.
When I open the task manager and click end process that solves the problem about 50% of the time. The other 50% the Firefox process simply doesn't end or will take several minutes to actually end, rendering Firefox unusable without a system restart.
I've used Firefox for years and have loved it but I am nearing the end of my patience as these issues arise at least once a day.
All Replies (2)
Hello,
Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration. Since this feature was added to Firefox, it has gradually improved, but there still are a few glitches.
You might need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).
Then perform these steps:
- Click the orange Firefox button at the top left, then select the "Options" button, or, if there is no Firefox button at the top, go to Tools > Options.
- In the Firefox options window click the Advanced tab, then select "General".
- In the settings list, you should find the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox. Uncheck this checkbox.
- Now, restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.
Additionally, please check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in the following Knowledge base articles:
Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!
Thank you.
As a first diagnostic, could you switch the Flash Player to "click to play" and see whether that makes a difference? After doing that, you will receive a notification either in the black rectangle in the page, or toward the left end of the address bar, to enable Flash if you want it to run on that site.
You can make the change on the Add-ons page. Either:
- Ctrl+Shift+a
- orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Plugins. Then find Shockwave Flash and switch it from "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate".
Does Firefox work any more smoothly? If so, I recommend disabling the protected mode feature of the Flash Player plugin. The steps are described in this support article from Adobe under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?
If Windows gives you problems with permissions, another approach is listed in this post: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../981145#answer-514340.