Firefox fails every 5 out of 10 times

[jb14813]

i have the same problem has a solution been found? i have almost an exact sys i have an amd x2 4200+ nvidia graphics vista home premium and firefox does the same thing i am kind of pissed because i hate ie

[Magnumo]

Same software - ff, avg, za with vista premium on an acer laptop dual core 1gb

Pain in the arse - if I wait about 5 mins after boot then it does not happen. Its really annoying as I have also used ff for years without problem.

It seems to be vista that is doing something - I use the same programs above on a machine running xp (not dual core though) and do not get this problem - ever.

[Lasar]

anything new about this problem ?

[Teven6o]

In another thread someone said uninstalling Zonealarm fixed the problem.

[phredphish]

This problem has started for me recently; setup is an Acer laptop Intel dual core with 2gb RAM, Vista Home Premium, Firefox 2.0.0.11, AVG and ZoneAlarm. Vista came pre installed, together with 90 day trial Norton Internet Security - no problems with Firefox....
When Norton trial period expired, removed this fully (using Norton's removal tools) and installed AVG and ZoneAlarm - still no problems, but a few days later I also "removed" another pre installed program - Cyberlink PowerProducer 3.7, and within a day or so, the problem with Firefox began....
.."removed Cyberlink" consisted of deleting all directories, files and registry entries relating to the program, as the 'Uninstall' facility in the program did not exist (only an inoperative icon), and it could not be removed through the control panel! On contacting Cyberlink support, their "assistance" commenced with "Click on the uninstall icon..." !!!
Four other machines in the house (all with ZoneAlarm, three NortonAV and one AVG) work perfectly with Firefox - but all are running XP ( two XP Home, two XP Pro).......
I will experiment with disabling AVG, then starting FF, restarting AVG, then connecting to internet, but I have my doubts.....

[nik.tech]

I think I have finally found a solution to having Firefox not start up and be stuck in the Task Manager with no way to end it on Vista.

The problem, as I suspected long time ago, is with Vista's new networking stack. I have found a thread here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 71#3075971 that explains how to reset the network stack to its original state (just as it was when Vista was installed). After doing this, the problem no longer occurred (I did 6 reboots in a row and Firefox always started fine).

Here are the steps to reset the stack from that thread:

Open up command prompt as an admin (press Windows Key + R to open 'Run' dialog, then type 'cmd'). Then, in cmd type:

netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ip reset reset.log
netsh int ipv6 reset reset.log

Also, I think Microsoft will fix the issue in Service Pack 1 once it comes out. I tried installing SP1 RC1 on my Vista machine (before resetting the stack) and have found that the problem no longer occurred, although a much more major problem started happening - I started getting BSODs when browsing the internet with Firefox. All BSODs happened because of a null pointer somewhere in NETIO.SYS, which is probably the driver that caused the original Firefox hang problem and got patched by MS.

[VanillaMozilla]

Keep us posted, nik.tech. This is very interesting, and it will be interesting to see how this turns out. Microsoft has completely rewritten their network stack in Vista ("stack" is geek-speak for "big pile of software"). It's all so incredibly complicated that some people are saying it might not work quite right for a few <i>years!</i>

[beeb375]

After months of searching for a solution, yours is working very well so far, thank you very much! I'll post again in this thread in a few days to let you know if it's still working.

[beeb375]

Oh crap.

I spoke too soon, third restart and the problem is back. Unless I'm meant to do those 3 steps in the cmd window every time I shut down the PC? Because I only did it once.

Grrs.

[trolly]

If it works again you can make a batch file and a shortcut.

[beeb375]

Hmm, I may just do that and try running it before each shutdown (I say this because the cmd window tells me a reboot will be required), if it consistently makes FF work again then at least it's a solid temporary workaround.

[trolly]

Maybe create a batch file to start firefox and include the reset commands after.

[beeb375]

How would I go about doing that? I managed to create one that will do those 3 commands, which I ran before last shutdown (FF started fine this morning) but I don't know how I'd make it run the commands afterwards.

[trolly]

Just insert "....\firefox.exe" in front of the reset commands.
And change the target of the firefox shortcut to that file.
Then firefox will run first and after firefox has closed the reset commands are executed.

[nik.tech]

This is strange as my Firefox has been doing fine this whole week with that fix.

Are you sure the unopened Firefox process cannot be killed from the task manager?

You might want to make sure that your Vista is updated as much as possible with Windows Update.

You can also try (on your own risk as this caused a lot of blue screens for me) Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate 1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en