Firefox Not Responding

[wendyl]

I have a serious problem with firefox again. A few months ago when I had a similar problem I finished up buying a new motherboard (Gigabyte) but it is driving me mad at the moment! Everytime I try to connect there is probably a 2 minute delay before it responds. I have tried changing to Google Chrome which does respond OK but as it has not 'saved' passwords this also brings problems it suggests I am using a different computer and asks for a password. I think it has now saved most I use frequently but because I use Thunderbird for email, when I try to respond it goes back to firefox and slows down again. Does anyone have solution please, preferably so I can still use firefox

[hc4361]

Have you tried running Firefox in safe mode to determine that an add on isn't causing problems?

[SlackAlice]

Try re-installing Firefox.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/

No need to remove your old version. The most up to date and current version is 37.0.1

Make sure you designate Firefox as your 'default' browser. Found at Tools/Options/General (Put tick in the box) click apply and ok.

Not sure about the correlation between Thunderbird email and Firefox browser settings, more details please. Also, I presume you are starting Firefox from its own desktop shortcut?

[New Judge]

I have had similar problems with Firefox ever since I installed it. I did so because I was told it was a superior product to IE and was less prone to problems.

At least once a day it falls over entirely; When I try to relaunch it it usually tells me "Firefox is already running etc..."; it often runs slowly prompting me to run some sort of cleanup routine (when I promptly lose all my cookies and history); it frequently goes through long spells of "not responsing..". I run it on three machines and have the same problems on all of them. In short it is rubbish and I am looking for something which might do the job a bit more efficiently

[New Judge]

Yes I've done that at least twice, slack. It is still rubbish.

[SlackAlice]

Never had any problems with Firefox myself and I've been using it for years. Mind you, I only use it with an Adblocker and no other add ons. I do enable the pop up blocker as well.

I've tried out most of the other popular browsers and strangely enough keep returning to Firefox and find IE11 has improved vastly and is nowhere near as slow as IE used to be.

[Buenchico]

One of the most common causes of Firefox 'not responding' is that it can't access enough memory because the user's antivirus software is hogging it all as it updates itself.

I've had that problem happen repeatedly (on different computers) when using Microsoft Security Essentials. Svchost.exe is shown, under the Processes tab in Task Manager, as using 1Gb or more of memory, with a constantly changing memory figure for MsMpEng.exe (which is MSE's update feature) indicating that it's MSE that's making the call on svchost.exe.

Switching to Avast has produced (on more than one computer) a similar problem, except that it's then AvastSvc.exe which has the constantly changing memory figure, while svchost.exe again goes sky high for memory usage. Disabling some features of Avast has reduced the amount of time that I have to wait for everything to get back to normal but I've still not found a complete solution. (There are also a few times when it seems to be TrustedInstaller.exe, which is part of the Windows update system, that seems to be making memory-hogging calls on svchost.exe but it's mainly my antivirus software that seems to be the cause of the problem).

So which antivirus program are you running?

[New Judge]

Norton on two machines, none on the third.

[hc4361]

I use Chrome and my start up time from cold boot is less than 30 seconds.

[SlackAlice]

methyl
I'm using
1)Windows 7 home premium 64bit on a desktop pc with 16Gb ram. SSD for the Main drive

2)AVG free for antivirus

3) Firefox 37.0.1 gives me a usable browser within 5 seconds of clicking the icon shortcut. Program is installed on an additional drive. Internet connection is Virgin Cable of supposedly 150Mbps.

[hc4361]

SlackAlice, your set up is much the same as mine, except I'm using W8.1

[SlackAlice]

hc4361
I decided against Windows 8 or 8.1 quite happy with Windows 7.

Probably will upgrade to Windows 10 after its been released for a while.

[Chris_Mackenzy]

I don't know why people rely on just one browser only, I have used chrome, firefox, opera, safari and Internet Explorer all at same time. There are certain applications that have compatibility issue with one browser or one version of that browser so simple solution is that don't restrict yourself and try the other one.