firefox slowing down

[MJIthewriter]

I've got this problem where after keeping both my computer and firefox running, that it will slow down. For instance as I am typing this message, I may not even see the text as I type... I The curser gets stuck at a point and then I have to wait several seconds for it to unfreeze. Or I can continue to type without seeing what I am typing. Maybe it will finish typing it after the wait or maybe it will type it partially. Going back and editing my type is a pain because it will momentary freeze up every other word or click. Not sure I am describing it well. Too bad I can't make a video to explain it further.  Also clicking from one tab to another takes way longer than it should and scrolling down pages.

[Cloudwindgate]

hmmm I have never had any issues with firefox and find it to be much more usful then
IE It more may be your PC then the browser to run multiple things at a time your computer needs to be stronger. What are your computer specs do u use a dual prosser (forgive my bad spelling) do you know your FSB have you made any self improvements. Ram can be a good cheap way to make your computer run much better.

[SassyLassie]

I had the newer version of firefox, I hated it, so, I uninstalled it and went back to IE7. Everything seemed so sluggish when I had it, and I just was not happy with it. I will have to check out the opera.

[MJIthewriter]

My browser and computer finally crashed, so I had to reboot. While I was at it I decided to upgrade my Opera browser to 10. It's got the built in spell checker I've wanted and I've known Opera to be faster than firefox.

Will see if it works overall better.

[Jade59]

Yes, my computer really slowed down if I had a tab open playing music ( I wasn't on Youtube either) at the same time I had a tab open here.  I think it was the adobe player too.  I got that same notice...that a script was slowing down my system.  I too, found if I closed out the "music" tab, the computer pretty much returned to normal.  Too bad.  I loved the option of listening to music while here at MH, but my computer really slowed down the longer the music went on.  

I got rid of firefox completely, but think I will try again because I liked it overall...at least, I think lol.  It's the only browser I've experimented with other than IE.

[MJIthewriter]

I noticed another thing about the slowdown. It seems to be worse if I have a you-tube video (or other flash apps?) and if I play something on you-tube repeatedly, then it appears to stall the computer a bit more with each successive play. But if I close out any window with you-tube or let it stop playing, so far seems to return the computer to workable speed.

Could be the sluggishness is a conflict with flash (adobe flash). On occasion I have gotten notices suggesting I abort scripts that may make my system unresponsive. (usually when hitting okay, it messes up the you-tube player, namely the "replay" button.)

[Jade59]

Thank you, MJ!   Maybe I DID hit the back button in the middle of an upload or something.  I know I was getting frustrated and was trying to go too fast...faster than my PC would keep up.  I noticed the final and definite problem here at MH when I came in through Firefox.  The page wouldn't come up completely so I came in through Internet Explorer.  The next time I tried to come to MH through Firefox, it said it crashed!  

All I knew to do was to "remove" the program from the control panel which is what I did.  I suppose I can just download (upload? I get those confused) firefox again.  When you say "restart" is that the same as download?

I'm sorry you're having so many problems too.  Very frustrating.  I understand :(  You know lots more than I do though.  I'm just doing things, following the instructions and hoping for the best :)

Thanks so much for responding to my question, MJ.

[MJIthewriter]

One common crash for me is if I were to click to upload photos by javascript (upload several at once), then decide for whatever reasons, that was a mistake, hit the back button and try a basic upload (one picture at a time). Using the back button in the middle of an upload process like that frequently causes firefox to crash on my computer. Other things I don't know. They seem to be random. Sometimes it's a problem with the website loaded and sometimes it's the browser. Or it could be a combo of both. I'm no expert, these are just my guess.

Best thing is to restart the browser. If you have the session saver add on , it will reload all the tabs you had up before it crashed (or from a certain point in time as I've noticed.) If it crashes again, then it could be a problem with a website. You may have to close out suspected site before it starts to reload. If not then you may have to start over with a new session.
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Right now the slowing is really aggravating me, to the point of banging my keyboard and feeling just about ready to chuck it out the windows. (if I didn't have them sealed off). The fans in the machine often get really loud and change pitch at the same time or just before the computer gets really slow.  This may or may not be the same problem, but I suspect the fans going loud, mean a hardware problem with my machine.

Possibly it's overheating and the fans are trying to cool it down. Sometimes the computer will completely lock up and I have to restart. I'm kind of watching this slowdown and hoping it doesn't mean I have to restart any time soon. Overall it seems to come and go. If I leave my machine idle sometimes it seems to calm down and return to near normal speed. Other times it just gets progressively worse until the computer gets rebooted.

[Jade59]

Hey MJ, my firefox was 3.5.8 (I'm sure of the 3.5, not sure of the 8) anyway, it crashed for some reason!  I didn't realize there were so many versions like you and Please_Help are talking about.  I wish I knew what I was doing LOL.  Do you have any idea what would make a browser "crash" or what I could have done wrong so I won't do it next time?

[MJIthewriter]

I have 3.0.14. The update notice does pop up time to time, but I don't want it automatically restarting my browser quite yet. I'll have to close out some tabs before I do, otherwise the session saver will pull up more tabs than it can load.

[Please_Help950]

May I ask if you have the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox (The 3.0.15 version)? I too was having some problems with the earlier version of Firefox before I updated it.

[MJIthewriter]

It's the reason I couldn't use firefox 2 on this computer. It was much worse, even more than this. It would completely freeze up for about 3 min between clicks and browsing was impossible. I gave up and uninstalled it, switched to Opera.

Opera doesn't do the slowing down that firefox does. In fact I believe it to be a better browser than firefox, but I wish it was compatible with 100% of the websites I visit. Facebook is one that I know to not work with opera, which is a shame. Plus it doesn't seem to have the built in spell checker to the same degree firefox has. Other features it has put it above firefox such as being able to right click a url and go rather than having to copy and paste.

Back to firefox. I doubt I'll get any further response on it...I've tried to no avail to search google for an explanation... In fact I should have put some tags here so google could pick up this topic. There's nothing else about it... It's either a rare problem or something people don't talk about?? The only other thing I can say is that I have the session saver and adblock plus plug in. Perhaps it's an issue with one of the plug ins, but neither I can remove, nor do I really want to. I rely on both rather extensively.

[Jade59]

I just downloaded Firefox because the IE browser I was using was no longer going to be supported by certain sites.  At first, Firefox worked great, but if I have more than one tab open, it slows way down like you describe and scrolling can be slow too.   I know next to nothing about all this, but I'm in the process of teaching myself so I don't have an answer for you, just that I can relate.  

I will be curious to see the response you get...