Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read speed

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
bookmarkimport
Posts: 51
Joined: February 3rd, 2014, 6:27 pm

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by bookmarkimport »

Alright, well, the problem has been narrowed further...

1. I made a 10GB volume on E: using VeraCrypt (an updated fork of TrueCrypt) and copied my 2GB Firefox profile to it. The profile loaded fast.

2. However, when I made a 10GB TrueCrypt volume on the same E: drive, that was also fast. So it's not a TrueCrypt only issue.

3. I then converted my big Z: drive from TrueCrypt to VeraCrypt, the Firefox profile was still just as slow loading as with TrueCrypt. So the problem appears to be a big volume that's encrypted with either TC/VC. I was hopeful of VC since they said there are fewer performance issues. I'll ask them about it, but if anyone has any suggestions, let me know here. Thanks!
TheVisitor
Posts: 5469
Joined: May 13th, 2012, 10:43 am

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by TheVisitor »

bookmarkimport wrote:Alright, well, the problem has been narrowed further...

1. I made a 10GB volume on E: using VeraCrypt (an updated fork of TrueCrypt) and copied my 2GB Firefox profile to it. The profile loaded fast.

2. However, when I made a 10GB TrueCrypt volume on the same E: drive, that was also fast. So it's not a TrueCrypt only issue.

3. I then converted my big Z: drive from TrueCrypt to VeraCrypt, the Firefox profile was still just as slow loading as with TrueCrypt. So the problem appears to be a big volume that's encrypted with either TC/VC. I was hopeful of VC since they said there are fewer performance issues. I'll ask them about it, but if anyone has any suggestions, let me know here. Thanks!

Wait, What ? How do you wind up with a 2GB Profile ?
bookmarkimport
Posts: 51
Joined: February 3rd, 2014, 6:27 pm

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by bookmarkimport »

TheVisitor wrote:Wait, What ? How do you wind up with a 2GB Profile ?
1. webappsstore.sqlite is 431 MB and storage/temporary is 700 MB

2. When I sync'd that profile to a new profile, it was much smaller but the same lag was there if the profile was located in the big encrypted Z: drive. On the other hand, when I had a small encrypted file, even the 2GB profile worked fast.
bookmarkimport
Posts: 51
Joined: February 3rd, 2014, 6:27 pm

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by bookmarkimport »

It's been over a week, wanted to bump in case anyone had any ideas. Thanks!!
User avatar
therube
Posts: 21703
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by therube »

1. webappsstore.sqlite is 431 MB and storage/temporary is 700 MB
Both seem, to me, compared to what I have (12 / 27 MB), rather huge.

Note that some extensions store their settings/data within storage.
(uBlock, in storage/default. Oh, & my 27 MB is mainly from uBlock. The actual /temporary/ is 0.)

2. sync
I know nothing of sync, but maybe it skips much of or all of storage/temporary?
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
allande
Posts: 188
Joined: July 20th, 2017, 11:58 am

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by allande »

This could be a long shot, but make sure you don't have bitlocker turned on on the hard drive partition that stores the encrypted container file. If you did, it would be double-encrypting and it might rewrite large portions of the container every time a small change was made. It is also typical to exclude the container file from your antivirus software for a similar reason, to avoid repeated scanning of a huge file.
bookmarkimport
Posts: 51
Joined: February 3rd, 2014, 6:27 pm

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by bookmarkimport »

allande wrote:This could be a long shot, but make sure you don't have bitlocker turned on on the hard drive partition that stores the encrypted container file. If you did, it would be double-encrypting and it might rewrite large portions of the container every time a small change was made. It is also typical to exclude the container file from your antivirus software for a similar reason, to avoid repeated scanning of a huge file.
I don't have bitlocker, so that's not an issue. I've excluded the encrypted file from Avast, but unfortunately that hasn't changed anything. Thanks for the suggestion though!
bookmarkimport
Posts: 51
Joined: February 3rd, 2014, 6:27 pm

Re: Firefox slow to startup: high active time, low read spee

Post by bookmarkimport »

TLDR: A Firefox profile folder located in a 1) huge 1TB+ 2) TrueCrypt/Veracrypt encrypted partition took forever to load up causing lags. The below resolves most of the issues:

I tinkered around in Options --> Cookies and Site Data --> Manage Data... and saw that some sites were taking up a HUGE amount of storage. Weather.com took up 700MB for example. That site took forever load, even after the initial minutes of wait.

After clearing them out via Remove All in Manage Data (and Clear Data since not all site content was removed), the cookies column appeared in Manage Data and start ups took a lot less time. It's still not as quick as other browsers, but it's a huge improvement.
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