Firefox hangs, crashes, etc.

[Bruce L.]

Hi all.

I have a Lenovo laptop running W7, latest Firefox.

Before I updated FF I was running an OLD version which has worked fine up until recent weeks. I was having trouble with it not being able to load more than two tabs at a time, hanging up, sometimes crashing, sometimes clearing itself. I do have a slow DSL signal (I have rebooted the modem) but it's been the same for years and no problem with it before this. I could load several tabs at the same time and although it might take a while, it wouldn't cause FF to crash.

I've had problems with Adobe Flash before, so I have that set to "Ask to activate."

So I update FF last week and am still having problems, most noticeable when I'm streaming radio stations -- seems like there's a bandwidth problem. The stream will stop until the page loads, then usually resumes.

I have run FF in safe mode and it still does it; so far, the page will load and the streaming will come back on after the page loads. I have added one extension back at a time and that may make the situation worse, but the problem happens so infrequently it is hard to pin down the culprit. When not in safe mode sometimes FF will hang on a loading tab, sometimes it will clear itself, sometimes it will crash.

I'm leaning away from it being a FF problem, however. I also run Thunderbird (with latest update). When FF is acting up the cursor is free, but trying to switch to another program can take forever -- I go to it and click but nothing happens for 15-30 seconds. CPU and memory in the task manager show nothing unusual going on, they are running the same as when there is no problem.

Looking at it from afar, it seems updating FF has helped the problem somewhat, and running in safe mode also helps, but neither have eliminated the problem.

Any quick things to check? It's getting frustrating and I'm about at my technological end.

[Brummelchen]

major issue for stacked programs like firefox with no cpu load is in most cases less memory (RAM). running firefox on 1 or 2 gig ram could end up in slow perfoamance, in special when two mozilla engines are running same time.

provide some information please (text, not raw)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/us ... ix-firefox

for firefox and thunderbird please!

[therube]

As a test, create a new, clean Profile & test in there.
Streaming, might just be that your DSL speed is not sufficient.


([Years ago] I used to have DSL, & other then being relatively slow, problems were rare. Brother has DSL & it simply sucks.)

[Bruce L.]

major issue for stacked programs like firefox with no cpu load is in most cases less memory (RAM). running firefox on 1 or 2 gig ram could end up in slow perfoamance, in special when two mozilla engines are running same time.

provide some information please (text, not raw)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/us ... ix-firefox

for firefox and thunderbird please!

FWIW: I have a 64 bit system, 4 GB ram. I've had this laptop over four years and haven't made any hardware or other changes.

Last night FF crashed and I noticed that the RAM was almost pegged out, CPU was low. What I've found in recent days is that FF runs fairly well if I disable the auto-refresh extensions I have ("ReloadMatic" and tried "Tab Auto Refresh" too) and if I do not open Thunderbird. None of this was ever an issue for years until just recently.

[Bruce L.]

As a test, create a new, clean Profile & test in there.
Streaming, might just be that your DSL speed is not sufficient.


([Years ago] I used to have DSL, & other then being relatively slow, problems were rare. Brother has DSL & it simply sucks.)

Quoting from my OP, color added:

"I do have a slow DSL signal (I have rebooted the modem) but it's been the same for years and no problem with it before this. I could load several tabs at the same time and although it might take a while, it wouldn't cause FF to crash."

[therube]

FF crashed

about:crashes, the related crash report URL?

RAM was almost pegged out

Just how much is "pegged out"?

[DanRaisch]

When FF is acting up the cursor is free, but trying to switch to another program can take forever

Which points to memory issues. Have you run any tests on system memory to make sure it isn't a bad memory module?

but it's been the same for years and no problem with it before this.

But you have updated Firefox to newer versions. Are those extensions up to date for the current version of Thunderbird?
And creating a new profile to see if something in that old profile has gone bad is worth the time it would take to do so.