firefox 3.6 hangs: one specific cause

[rireed3]

There are so many 'firefox hangs' or 'firefox slow' posts I decided to post a new thread for this obvious cause in my environment.

I've proved this particular example to be caused by Bitdefender Anti Virus 2010 'AntiPhishing'. My Environment:

New change from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Part of the change requires reinstallation of Firefox -- I used 3.6.

Firefox was working fine until I downloaded and installed my recently purchased Bitdefender Anti Virus 2010.

With Bitdefender apparently working properly after several scans, and with no scanning active at the time, Firefox would work OK for several minutes following a clean Firefox startup, but gradually, all user-interface highlighting, clicking, and 'Loading...' responses slowed to 'hang' delays in 10's of seconds.

The Bitdefender 'AntiPhishing' feature shows a small toolbar on Firefox 3.6. When I disabled Bitdefender AntiPhishing with this element, response was completely restored, and 'hanging' has not returned even after several Firefox complete restarts. If anything, response is now better than when I ran Firefox 3.6 under Windows XP.

In Bitdefender I have excluded AntiPhishing from vulnerability alerts, and will simply rely on my own good sense for anti-phishing. All other Bitdefender features seem to be fine and don't interfere with Firefox operation as far as I can tell.

Thanks for listening,
Richard

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy Richard,

i disabled the same feature in avg-free. it slowed things down less than you were seeing, but it was very noticeable. thanks for the heads-up!

take care,
lee

[rireed3]

My pleasure

[BillPrime]

Lee,

Are you talking about the "Active Surf-Shield" feature of AVG? I am running FF 3.6 on XP home and know that from time to time, and for no reason I can detect, FF hangs and cannot be killed. I can close the app window but the task manager still shows the process, which I cannot terminate. The only way I found to recover is to reboot. So I will try telling AVG to mind its business and leave FF alone and see if that helps!

May your downloads be swift and your uploads never exceed your bandwidth!

[LIMPET235]

BillPrime,
You may like to try Avast! instead of AVG.
I gave it away after many years of use.
Now my comp has no "weird" hangs etc.

[Anonymosity]

I have been using Antivir for years now, and have been happy with it. It does not interfere with Firefox in any way.

[Lee_Dailey]

Lee,

Are you talking about the "Active Surf-Shield" feature of AVG? I am running FF 3.6 on XP home and know that from time to time, and for no reason I can detect, FF hangs and cannot be killed. I can close the app window but the task manager still shows the process, which I cannot terminate. The only way I found to recover is to reboot. So I will try telling AVG to mind its business and leave FF alone and see if that helps!

May your downloads be swift and your uploads never exceed your bandwidth!

howdy BillPrime,

yes, i am talking about the "link scanner"/"surf shield" feature. i simply turned that off in the avg control panel and then disabled the "safe search" addon in firefox. i also do NOT use the "identity protection" or "complex threat protection" offered in avg pro. i'm cheap, so i use the free version. [*grin*]

a stuck or hung version of ff need not be handled thru a system reboot! [*grin*] i use task manager to clobber the firefox process when that happens. you might wanna lookit the following articles ...
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Kill_applicat ... completely
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox.exe_always_open

hope that helps,
lee