PC hangs while browsing - SOLVED

[jim750]

For some time I have had my Win7 PC randomly hang for 10-20secs a couple of times a day when browsing using Firefox (all recent versions).
HDD is active during the event with the router lights flashing - looks like malware but all scans have been negative.
Process Hacker gave no clue before or after the event and was frozen during the event - so no clue.
Tried a clean install after deleting all profile folders but the problem was there within minutes.

Then I noticed one webpage sometimes coincided with the event and had a look at its code. Inside a CSS file there is an embedded custom font.

This is the page: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/markets/

To stop the problem I went into "about:config" and turned "gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled" to false.

I'll be interested to see if anyone else can confirm this problem or if its just my machine. My portable version of CHROME also hangs the PC when loading this webpage, Internet Explorer seems OK.

[psaulm119]

Interesting. I don't know the cause of it, but my config is defaulted to true, and the page loaded just fine for me--it loaded quickly, and I could scroll up and down w/o a problem.

[jim750]

Just me then Oh well thanks for looking

[jim750]

I eventually found the root cause of this problem.
It seems that the Windows Font cache service setting was wrong.
Unsure if it was an update issue or my fault.
If you get a hang while browsing then it is something to check.

Windows 7
SP0 Default Startup: Manual - this gives a hang when there are fonts embedded in the CSS
SP1 Default Startup: Automatic (Delayed Start)

http://www.blackviper.com/windows-servi ... e-service/