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Every 6-7 minutes, Firefox spends about 1 minute hanging. No consistent cause for this, and it occurs in safe mode.

  • 12 replies
  • 204 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by John99

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I'm on Windows 7, and it hangs and turns grey and goes into "not responding" mode.

  • This does not happen because of any reliably consistent reason, like Flash or the use of an extension. It occurs regardless of what I am doing, whether that is YouTube or entering text into a box or reading a simple text-only page.
  • These hangs are very, very frequent. They occur every few minutes and last for around one minute.
  • Running in safe mode has not mitigated the problem.
  • This has been happening since I installed Firefox 5 on this computer, but continue to experience it in 6.0.1. The first installation of Firefox on this computer happened within a day or two of having purchased it.

If I get Windows to prompt me whether I want to force close Firefox, this is the information about the hang it provides:

Description:

 A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:

 Problem Event Name:	AppHangB1
 Application Name:	firefox.exe
 Application Version:	6.0.1.4259
 Application Timestamp:	4e5d3a4c
 Hang Signature:	0ea9
 Hang Type:	1
 OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
 Locale ID:	1033
 Additional Hang Signature 1:	0ea93cd24df519fbbba8efb93bad60ae
 Additional Hang Signature 2:	16d2
 Additional Hang Signature 3:	16d2dd5962b5484a1700bae65f5995d9
 Additional Hang Signature 4:	95ea
 Additional Hang Signature 5:	95eaad3d9f445fe69ce2230df2ab3503
 Additional Hang Signature 6:	ac2e
 Additional Hang Signature 7:	ac2e762b451aef19f88209add0b06e24


If I do choose to force Firefox to close, I will always receive the "Well, this is embarrassing" error upon restart, and can have it restore my tabs from there.

System specs: Dell XPS L502X, Intel i7-2720QM CPU at 2.2 GHz, 8GB RAM. I notice when the hangs happen, 2 of my 8 cores will become busier.

I'm on Windows 7, and it hangs and turns grey and goes into "not responding" mode. * This does not happen because of any reliably consistent reason, like Flash or the use of an extension. It occurs regardless of what I am doing, whether that is YouTube or entering text into a box or reading a simple text-only page. * These hangs are very, very frequent. They occur every few minutes and last for around one minute. * Running in safe mode has not mitigated the problem. * This has been happening since I installed Firefox 5 on this computer, but continue to experience it in 6.0.1. The first installation of Firefox on this computer happened within a day or two of having purchased it. If I get Windows to prompt me whether I want to force close Firefox, this is the information about the hang it provides: Description: A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows. Problem signature: Problem Event Name: AppHangB1 Application Name: firefox.exe Application Version: 6.0.1.4259 Application Timestamp: 4e5d3a4c Hang Signature: 0ea9 Hang Type: 1 OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Hang Signature 1: 0ea93cd24df519fbbba8efb93bad60ae Additional Hang Signature 2: 16d2 Additional Hang Signature 3: 16d2dd5962b5484a1700bae65f5995d9 Additional Hang Signature 4: 95ea Additional Hang Signature 5: 95eaad3d9f445fe69ce2230df2ab3503 Additional Hang Signature 6: ac2e Additional Hang Signature 7: ac2e762b451aef19f88209add0b06e24 If I do choose to force Firefox to close, I will always receive the "Well, this is embarrassing" error upon restart, and can have it restore my tabs from there. System specs: Dell XPS L502X, Intel i7-2720QM CPU at 2.2 GHz, 8GB RAM. I notice when the hangs happen, 2 of my 8 cores will become busier.

Modified by josephjacir

All Replies (12)

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I've just downgraded to Firefox 3.6 and this problem has not gone away...

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Correction - one of my cores becomes busy. I see the CPU use for firefox.exe jump to 13%, which is 1/8 cores.

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And no improvement in Firefox 6.0.2.

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I have this problem too. I got this when I tried to close Firefox while it was hanging.

Description:

 A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:

 Problem Event Name:	AppHangB1
 Application Name:	firefox.exe
 Application Version:	6.0.2.4262
 Application Timestamp:	4e6163d9
 Hang Signature:	0ea9
 Hang Type:	1
 OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
 Locale ID:	1035
 Additional Hang Signature 1:	0ea93cd24df519fbbba8efb93bad60ae
 Additional Hang Signature 2:	7924
 Additional Hang Signature 3:	79247b6e42be8f4b1bceb66ae9ecbb70
 Additional Hang Signature 4:	d866
 Additional Hang Signature 5:	d866f3089730521ddd7fc818b8734a63
 Additional Hang Signature 6:	4f03
 Additional Hang Signature 7:	4f0359f79247c333ff57f4ed9f7fc701

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I have noticed that the hang usually ends almost exactly when the system clock ticks over a new minute.

Modified by UncleSim

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I think I may have resolved it!

It hasn't happened in two days at this point. The only thing that changed was that I successfully updated Flash. I had had a problem where the Flash updater was not able to get through Windows 7 Firewall, but I made an inbound and outbound rule that allowed this program through: %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil10w_Plugin.exe and ran the update, and so far so good. I will update again if it happens any more.

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I updated to v7.01 today, and it hasn't happened since. Fingers crossed... thanks guys!

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I fully uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled. It worked fine for a few weeks, then Firefox 7.0.1 come along and this hanging problem came back.

I noticed that I have a newer version of Flash plugin, so correct path for me was: %SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil11c_Plugin.exe

Sadly this firewall trick didn't work for me.

This is so annoying that I consider switching to another browser. Used Firefox for years.

I also tried disable all my extensions and plugins, still hanging.

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It may be worth looking at:


Also note Firefox 3.6.23 is still supported, but Firefox 4 5 and 6 are not supported, and not considered secure.

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I might have discovered the solution without starting over with all your places and bookmarks.

Right after i installed 7.0.1 over a week ago,every 10-30 min When i would be watching videos online, it would freeze for 20-30 seconds. Firefox would say ( Not responding) both firefox and the plugin container process would be very large memory files. I tried to go back to Firefox 5.0. No avail it would still freeze.I tried to disable the plugin container . no good. I tried to adjust memory or cache or plugin settings in “about:config”.Nothing fixed it!

I finally discovered why my Firefox 7.01 was periodic hanging fix. It is something to do with some of your personal files. download this this add on and install it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

or you can Google "places maintenance Firefox"

After you install the add on, restart Firefox.go to "tools", then "add ons" and then click “extensions” tab ,then click' options" on the "places maintenance" entry. choose "ALL' or just "expire" and hit "execute", then wait until its done., restart Firefox. should be fine then and all my bookmarks, customizations ,settings, and history stays untouched!

After i did this my Firefox did not freeze once for over 3 days straight. Might not work for everyone. I already read thaqt Mozilla is aware of the problem and are working on a fix it in the full version of 8( the 8 beta did not fix the problem for me) . But they said this is a good temporary fix at least,( might be permanent)

For me at least ,Firefox works fine in 7 now. perfect actually.And many people i saw on similar forums had similar problems.

Enjoy. Hope this helped

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Here is what I did to finally fix my firefox: Run the places maintenance fix as described in the earlier posts install and run ccleaner Make sure you only have 1 version of Flash installed. For some reason adobe had 10 and 11 installed at the same time. only one plugin was showing in firefox, but was listed twice in ccleaner

working like new now!

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Hi xanderak,
I have also had problems with Flash installs in the past. A couple of points that may be worth noting are

  1. separate Flash plugins are required for Internet Explorer and Firefox
    (Of course most Windows users will have IE installed by default, and a large proportion of all browsers have Flash Player installed as a plugin)
  2. the Adobe test site should be used with (at least on Windows machines) each installed browser if you wish to confirm Flash Player works, and is up to date. The test site actually attempts to use the browsers installed flash plugin when returning results.