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I am now getting unresponsive script that locks up my computer. It takes forever to shut it down. help

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  • Last reply by John99

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I have just started getting this message over the last couple of weeks. Often when I haven't used the computer for a while and I try to, I get this unresponsive script message and I have to do control-alt-delete for about 5 minutes to get everything to shut down. It has never done this before. It first started doing this when I downloaded Mozilla 4.0 Beta. I thought that I had gotten rid of 4.0 Beta and gone back to 3.6. Why can't I stop this? When I tried to reload 3.5, it had me upload 3.6.

I have just started getting this message over the last couple of weeks. Often when I haven't used the computer for a while and I try to, I get this unresponsive script message and I have to do control-alt-delete for about 5 minutes to get everything to shut down. It has never done this before. It first started doing this when I downloaded Mozilla 4.0 Beta. I thought that I had gotten rid of 4.0 Beta and gone back to 3.6. Why can't I stop this? When I tried to reload 3.5, it had me upload 3.6.

All Replies (6)

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Whilst I do not know the specification of your computer the requirements for firefox are pretty low. However looking at the System Details you provide I would imagine you use multimedia and office applications and add-ons that will have their own much higher requirements. It seems unlikely that firefox by itself is the program stretching your computers resources.

You will need to bear in mind the requirements of the other software you have, and it is probably also worth looking at the amount of spare HDD space you have both in GB and as a % of the HDD, along with available RAM.

See also

Your system details are indicating you are using Firefox 3.6 and not firefox 4beta. You mention firefox 3.5 but I am not sure it would help to downgrade to that.

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What do you suggest I do about it. Would upgrading Java do any good?

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What do you suggest I do about it. Would upgrading Java do anything?

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It is a case of trying to find what is causing the problem. It is a possibility lack of RAM, lack of HDD space and a slow CPU are part of the problem.

You need to compare your computer with what the other software's recommended specifications are. Also when does this sort of problem happen, have you many tabs open, are you running background tasks such as disk indexing, downloading or automatic security updates or scans. Have you got addons enabled that you do not need to use ?

The articles mentioned in blue are links, click on them and have a read. Java should be the most upto date version, but in some circumstances there is a possibility it could not improve matters.

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When this happens, I only have e-mail and 1 internet window open. The thing is that I'm not doing anything differently in the last 2 weeks than I have the last 2 years and this has never happened before. I haven't added any new software or am using any more hard drive space. I was trying to get rid of an extra e-mail address and I couldn't. The Time Warner tech said that I should uninstall Mozilla firefox 3.5 and then reload it again. I did that and got rid of the extra address. When I was looking to reload Firefox, I found 4.0 Beta and downloaded it. That's when I started having this problem. It was suggested that I go back to 3.5. I ended up with 3.6 because they said that 3.5 was obsolete. But I'm still having the same problem. I had never heard of "unresponsive script" in all the years that I have had Firefox. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so difficult to shut down the windows and start over again. The push buttons on the screen don't work. It always takes at least 5 or 6 minutes to close down.

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Mention of Time Warner, leads me to think you could have AOL as your ISP, I am not sure; but seem to recall years ago AOL seemed to prefer you to use its own modified browser.

There is a possibility the particular site or ISP may be part of your problem. Is your problem specifically that deleting AOL webmail addresses may cause the unresponsive script/hang. The workaround in that case may be to fall back on using IE for that particular task. It may be interesting to know if many other users have a similar problem, it could even be worth starting a thread with that problem as the title. [ or maybe that is already a known problem I have not looked around the board in detail]

Another thought is that if you are intensively deleting bookmarks that may be part of a known issue as per the link in my last post. There is a additional information in : http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs#Hang_deleting_bookmark... If you are deleting (or presumably moving/copying large chunks also) bookmarks part of the advice is to make changes in small steps.