FF2 on Vista: S L O W

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
camera
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FF2 on Vista: S L O W

Post by camera »

[*cough*]

Web sites hosted on my server take forever to load when viewing them in FF2 on Windows Vista.

But the problem doesn't seem to be my server because...

1. pages load fine in IE7 on Vista
2. pages load fine in FF2 on XP

How slow is slow? After browsing to a site in FF2, I can launch IE7 and completely load the same page before FF2 finishes downloading the images.

I can only reproduce this problem on sites hosted by my server. I can only assume some other sites would behave similarly but I can't seem to find any. Here are a couple sites that are slow to load:

http://drnaeve.com (old-school tables site)
http://envexpress.com (xhtml 1.1 served as text/html)
http://claremoredisciples.com (xhtml 1.1 served as text/html)
http://elsamaritano.org.ni (xhtml 1.1 served as application/xhtml+xml)

These all share an IP address. I'll change something on my server if it will help, but I'd like to know if the Firefox team believes there is a problem with the browser as opposed to my server. The server is running IIS6 with gzip compression enabled on Windows 2003 Server.

Sincerely,

Carl
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Post by camera »

[coughs again, clears throat.]
Caguet
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Post by Caguet »

Try firefox (not windows) safe mode:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

Unfortunately, the "Firefox team" is not here. They are too busy coding and testing to hang out in these forums. I don't know of a known issue with Vista, although it does have a bidirectional firewall now. Perhaps the firewall can now have the problems that other firewalls used to.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firewalls

Also search these forums for Vista, there may be more discussion.

Also if you have pipelining on, try off / or vice versa.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.pipelining
Caguet
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Post by Caguet »

Also, Vista may have more support for IP6. IP6 may cause problems, so see if things are better without it:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.dns.disableIPv6
camera
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Post by camera »

Thank you Caguet for your advice. All these suggestions are excellent, well thought out possibilities. I've adjusted the configuration (hmm never new about "about:config" before...) to enable/disable these settings. Alas, none seem to be helping whatsoever. I wish I could blame my server somehow but pages are loading lightning-fast in IE7 on Vista.

If anyone else has suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Caguet
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Post by Caguet »

Most about:config settings do not take effect until the browser is restarted (just in case you hadn't tried that).
I'm sorry you didn't have more luck.
camera
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Joined: December 6th, 2006, 12:52 pm

Post by camera »

Thanks. Just to be sure, I did indeed close the browser and start it back up. Thanks for checking. I've also opened a forum post over in Vista-land.
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

Do you have a dual core cpu? Then you can try to setup FF to use only one core. This is a known problem even on XP.
Read here: http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=65211&st=35
There is also a link to a tool which can set the affinity.
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
camera
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Post by camera »

Thanks for asking and that would be a good guess also. It's slow at home (Pentium M [those are single core aren't they] on Dell Notebook) and at work 2.8GHz Celeron [also single core I believe.] I have a confirmation from a Vista Forum dude that his Firefox 2 slows to a crawl on those sites I listed. He checked just the top two before confirming.

I really thought Caguet was on the right track with the IPv6 dns or pipelining suggestions but still no luck. Even if I found pipelining or other browser setting to solve the problem, it doesn't help because I can't put a big red sign on a church website saying "If your Firefox is running slow here, disable feature X."
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trolly
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Post by trolly »

If you like you can try FF 3 branch or even trunk builds if they run better.
I guess you have already tried this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diag ... Firefox%29
Think for yourself. Otherwise you have to believe what other people tell you.
A society based on individualism is an oxymoron. || Freedom is at first the freedom to starve.
Constitution says: One man, one vote. Supreme court says: One dollar, one vote.
tim.mac
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Joined: December 22nd, 2006, 11:24 am

Post by tim.mac »

hi carl. just wondering if you found an explanation for this? i suspect it is IIS7 being slow to serve non-IE clients, possibly an authentication issue but i've tried a few things that made no difference. i don't know much about IIS7 at all.

it happens me because i'm using visual studio 2005 on Vista with FF (1.5.0.9) as my default browser, and every time i run or debug a website, it comes up in firefox and takes about 2 seconds to load a page that loads in 0.1 seconds in IE7, it's a real pain.

i would suspect FF 1 2 and 3 would all suffer the same problem. i'll hunt around a bit more on the IIS7 front and see if i get anything.
tim
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Post by camera »

Tim, I haven't tracked this down. I accepted the recent FF2.0.0.1 upgrade and the sluggishness continues.

I don't think it is related to IIS7 because my sites (listed earlier in this thread) are running on II6/win2k3 server.

I think there's something low-level client-side (ie something new in Vista) that is causing FF to stall when retrieving images, perhaps FF thinks that it hasn't received an image packet (but has) and then kind of freezes up waiting for the packet to arrive and then finally timing out -- sometimes reissuing a request and recovering -- sometimes just giving up.

But if my theory is correct, why only my server's sites? FF2 should be choking on many many sites, but I've only experienced this on my server's sites. (Of course, I only use FF2 rarely on Vista now because of the sluggishness problem.)

Let me know if you find something also. To contact me directly via email, just google my name (hint: my last name is my thread name) the first ten links point to me in some way.

Edit: changed FF2.0.1 to FF2.0.0.1
Last edited by camera on December 22nd, 2006, 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tim.mac
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Joined: December 22nd, 2006, 11:24 am

Post by tim.mac »

hi carl. interesting, i just tried out your sites listed at the top of this thread and they do take ages in FF and are quick in IE. with my sites running on IIS7 the time delay was about 2 seconds instead of instant when using IE7. i still suspect IIS 7 of some IE-friendly authentication that doesn't work with FF and takes a bit longer, but it isn't a problem for me on IIS6.
anyway, i'll keep my eyes open and let you know if i find anything.
good luck
tim
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Post by camera »

tim, what plug-ins are installed on your FF2?
camera
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Joined: December 6th, 2006, 12:52 pm

Post by camera »

Try disabling Dom Inspector, re-starting Firefox and then hit my pages again. Share results. Thanks.
-carl
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