firefox constantly freezing and going nresponsive

[treos]

well, you guys helped me with computer back when i had that google hijack issue and no, i don't have that nuisance again. this time its something else, anyone here ever experience firefox doing what i said in the title here? every few seconds its going unresponsive entirly then a couple seconds later working, rinse/repeat style.

so...anyone have some helpful advice again? UGH, STOP DOING THIS YA IDIOTIC BROWSER! (would prefer not losing firefox but this is worse than the seldom memory leak thats always existed in firefox)

edit: watched it in my task managers recource monitor to see what exactly was happening. everytime it locks up temporarily, it spikes to around 50 cpu usage. (normally its around 10 or more depending on if i have a flash game or something running) i've no idea why this is happening though but i did kill the internet connection to my laptop and got rid of 2 trojans last night if that had anything to do with this.

[gezegond]

It might be that one of your addons gotten bust. If you're using addons, start firefox in safe mode. If that solves the problem, disable addons (and plugins such as java and flash) one by one in normal mode to find out what the cause of the problem is.

I remember having the same kind of issue a long time ago, but it was a windows problem and would occasionally happen to other applications besides firefox (It was just more visible in firefox because that was the program I used most)

[treos]

well, i'm updating those plugins now to see if that helps. seeing tech support reports come up on google from 5+ years ago about this exact bug when it happens to me sometimes makes me wonder...do the devs at mozilla even know how they're own program works? or better yet, how to debug? (i don't but that one is still a fair comment)

typing this: 5+ freezes, a few seconds each.

edit: well, flash updated, no change. this doesn't seem like it'll ever be up to date though, Shockwave for Director, as i updated it yet the mozilla site still says its not up to date whatever, i'll give safe mode a try i guess.

[deadlegion]

Make absolutely sure you have vulnerable plugins disabled.
In fact you should be able to have very little plugins/addons/extensions at all. The less the better.

Flash can be a pain, it can become vulnerable easily and need updates. You could disable it completely and just use a HTML5 addon instead (I think YouTube ALL HTML5 is the one to use).

[treos]

well safe mode is working flawlessly, aside from revealing a search bar i need to remove... goodbye amazon.com crapware. wonder how that even got there since i typically decline on all of those during any installation o.O

as for that youtube addon, would that still allow me to play flash games and whatnot? there, set a bunch of addons/themes to be removed due to potential incompatibility/instability and it looks like i have a java...Deployment Toolkit? plugin, know to be vulnerable, disabled. ok, lets see if any of those changes helped. (safe mode is pretty bare bones)

edit: well, dunno which addon/theme was causing the problems but apparently its gone as its not freezing up constantly now. weird, least its working correctly now and i didn't have to remove any flash plugins after all.

[deadlegion]

I don't know if you can play flash games just using the youtube html5 plugin
But the shockwave flash plugin becomes vulnerable very easily, and it is something that you need to keep an eye on (updates).
Java can be vulnerable too.

[gezegond]

Cool, one of your plugins or addons were malfunctioning. Good to hear it's working properly now.

[treos]

...guess what, the problem has returned.

currently i only have 3 add-ons with caution signs next to them in firefox (got rid of all the others last time this problem came up) and yes i already have firefox up in safe mode right now. these 3 add-ons are:

yellow: Internet Video Downloader 2.0.0.8 - disabled
yellow: Skype Click to Call 6.9.0.12585
red: (said addon is known to be vulnerable and should be used with caution) Java Deployment Toolkit 7.0450.18 10.45.2.18

the yellow ones are incompatible but the problem is theres no direct way of removing these from the add-ons menu in firefox so if one of these (i'm betting its that java one) is causing the problem then i don't know how to remove them. gonna do a quick antivirus scan now and see if something has slipped through, i'll edit this post afterwards.

edit: nothing came up on avast! so its no virus. its just firefox acting up again, and this time i haven't the slightest idea why as the above are the only 3 things in the add-on menu with caution symbols by them.

edit2: it wouldn't by any chance have something to do with my typically having over 15 tabs open in 2 tab groups would it? *goes to close a few*

[Ryu]

Other than major ram use and page memory usage.
Can't see it being an issue.

I would say it's an certificate system error.
But that would of been resolved by now.

The only other thing I could think of is a process conflict.
The addon's are trying to utilize active processes that are currently running in the background.

Run MSCONFIG.
Do a check, untick anything you don't use/need.
Even to a clean startup boot.

If this fixes the problem, then you know how to fix it

[MaslowK]

edit2: it wouldn't by any chance have something to do with my typically having over 15 tabs open in 2 tab groups would it? *goes to close a few*

It very well could actually. More tabs = more ram usage = more data being shuffled in and out of said ram, taking up "queues" that other processes then need to wait for. I'd try cutting that down to a single group of 10 or so and see if that helps.

If that doesn't help, have you tried uninstalling firefox, running a cleaner like CCleaner to get rid of associated files, then reinstalling it? That would be the next thing I'd try.

Also for a replacement for your video downloader, I'd recommend Flash Video Downloader. Doesn't work on youtube unfortunately (I use Youtube Center for that), but works great otherwise.

[HaloSlayer255]

Hello treos,

I had this issue for quite a while in firefox but assumed it was due to Vista. Anyways I was able to fix firefox constantly freezing and locking up by disabling Hardware Acceleration. Its in Options--> Advanced--> Use Hardware Accelerations when available. I know it kinda sounds ironic but IIRC when that option is checked firefox will use the GPU or in my case the IGP to render webpages. When I unselected that option firefox returned to its old speedy self. This is with 33 tabs open and about 20 some extensions. I use my Gateway MD2614U everyday and for hours and firefox hasn't crashed yet. Also try updating your graphics card drivers to resolve any optential issues with the driver. Though I'd do both and leave hardware acceleration disabled.

Good Luck,
HaloSlayer255