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Firefox 4 hangs a little on every action - typing, moving the window, selecting a menu item, selecting a tab, ...

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  • 181 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cmbarton

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Since installing Firefox 4 RC2, and now Firefox 4, Firefox constantly hangs on every action. Just in typing this message, the program pauses for a second or two every few words. Opening a tab, selecting a menu item or even moving the Firefox window incurs a brief pause of a second or two. This makes the users experience terribly slow. I've tried turning off sync and starting Firefox with extensions disabled. Nothing seems to help. I upgraded from RC2 but then deleted and reinstalled Firefox.

I'm having this problem on my MacBook Pro, which is pretty new (less than a year old) and otherwise very fast (i.e., i7 processor and 8Gb RAM). I have the newest version of OS X (10.6.7) and have updated all extensions.

I've watched my system monitor and Firefox is constantly and repeatedly going from low to near 100% CPU use every few seconds. I have no special, unusual settings (I've gone through preferences).

This is getting so bad that I'm about ready to abandon FireFox. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Since installing Firefox 4 RC2, and now Firefox 4, Firefox constantly hangs on every action. Just in typing this message, the program pauses for a second or two every few words. Opening a tab, selecting a menu item or even moving the Firefox window incurs a brief pause of a second or two. This makes the users experience terribly slow. I've tried turning off sync and starting Firefox with extensions disabled. Nothing seems to help. I upgraded from RC2 but then deleted and reinstalled Firefox. I'm having this problem on my MacBook Pro, which is pretty new (less than a year old) and otherwise very fast (i.e., i7 processor and 8Gb RAM). I have the newest version of OS X (10.6.7) and have updated all extensions. I've watched my system monitor and Firefox is constantly and repeatedly going from low to near 100% CPU use every few seconds. I have no special, unusual settings (I've gone through preferences). This is getting so bad that I'm about ready to abandon FireFox. Any suggestions would be helpful.

All Replies (10)

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My system monitor doesn't jump to 100%, but there are these annoying little hiccups every few seconds and it's like hearing water drip...it's going to drive me mad over time! (Mostly noticeable when typing text such as this where I've had 4 pauses just in the time it's taken me to type this!)

Win 7 64bit on a 6 month old PC.

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More testing and I think I've found the culprit--synching. I had synch turned down to only bookmarks, passwords, and preferences. But even with those settings it apparently is synching every few seconds. I've somehow accumulated a LOT of duplicate bookmarks and feeds (from prior synching perhaps), so synching involves going through several thousand items. I went through and cleaned a bunch of these out, but I haven't started up synch again.

I tried re-enabling xmarks (I was using that prior to FF4) but it seemed to either be stuck or taking a VERY long time.

At the moment, FF4 is working pretty well. No hanging and things load pretty fast. Note that the improvement didn't happen immediately after disabling sync, but improved over the course of an hour or two.

Not sure what to do next. I want my bookmarks in sync but can't stand the delays.

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I am having a similar problem. My symptoms: poor responsiveness to scrolling/very jerky scrolling, and poor responsiveness to typing in text boxes (it pauses every few characters when typing; this is a definite dealbreaker for me), slow response to clicking a link.

I have turned off my syncing and my Adblock extension, but these don't seem to solve the problem. I am considering switching back to Safari.

(I'm on a 1 year old MacBook Pro.)

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I recently had trouble with using Firefox and went and had to update it to Firefox4, for the screens to stop freezing. The new version works okay but it is much slower and does "hang on a bit longer" on every click. And slower to load up simple sites too. And it's only been like 3-4 days and I've seen webpages that used to work -- does not load or work on FF4 and pages I used to make online purchase from, like a big brand drugstore-- CVS, I cannot anymore because the page does Not work on FF4 for some reason.

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It did not help to just uncheck all sync items. I had to deactivate sync on the computer.

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I had the same problem, I kept searching and found this:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=580592&start=0 Which says to delete your sessionstore.js from your profile. It seems to have worked so far on my macbook pro.

If you're concerned about losing the file rename it first, here's a description about what the file does:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_Restore

Do all this with Firefox CLOSED.

Hopefully this helps others!

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I've continued to work on this. Here is what I've found. Firefox sync seems to be the primary culprit. When it is on, everything hangs, and this gets worse over time. Also, it adds a lot of weird junk to my bookmark list, especially random RSS feeds. It is almost as if it is adding bookmarks to the list for marketing purposes. I've gone through and deleted theses several times. I've also completely deleted and re-initiated my sync account several times. Nothing works.

I also tried bookmarks.com. It seems like it should work, but it also hangs up firefox and I had some crash problems.

So I went back to xmarks today. It was listed in the Firefox hall of shame for awhile as something that slows down Firefox 4. This is ironic as it does NOT seem to slow down Firefox but Firefox sync does.

So, if you are having this problem, I suggest you try deactivating Firefox sync. If this fixes the problem, you might try xmarks.

Michaesl

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I just deactivated Sync; as suggested above. I when I try to move my browser's window it moves with hanging. Is it possible that this is the answer to what has been driving to nuts and causing me to give serious thought to dumping FF and installing ie?

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Did you mean "it moves without hanging"? I've had Xmarks installed for some weeks now, without Firefox sync. It is better, but I still experience times of serious freezes. But at least SOME times it works smoothly.

If I look at my system monitor, the times when Firefox hangs are still associated with it using 60-99% of available CPU cycles. Sometimes it comes with messages about Xmarks syncing. But other times not. I don't know whether it is doing background syncs or something else. If it wasn't for Zotero, I'd probably switch to Safari.

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I've tried turning syncing off and it is still hanging. I tried deleting sessionstore.js, and it is still hanging. When it hangs, it is writing a lot of something to my disk. This is worrisome. I've tried getting rid of a bunch of history files and clearing the cache. The longer firefox is open, the worse this gets.