Firefox load times and homepage issues

[paulinphila]

Firefox takes about 5x as long as IE6 to load, then it won't open my homepage (My Yahoo!).

The message "We've detected that the My Yahoo! page cached on your machine is out of date.
Click here to continue to My Yahoo! with a fresh page" is displayed. I have to sign in (user name and password) everytime I start up Firefox. This gets to be a pain in the butt!

I'm running (crawling is more like it) Firefox 2.0.0.6 and Windows XP Pro on a year old IBM
Thinkpad (R 52).

I really like the feel of Firefox, which I think is similar to Safari, which I use on an IMAC. It's a shame that these issues take away from the fun... Any help would be appreciated.

[dickvl]

Are you using Spy Sweeper?
See:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=560924
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=562840

(edit: links corrected)

[vl]

Load Safe Mode to see if the Firefox browser loads faster: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

If Firefox is still loading slowly, then try creating a new profile: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

Are you running Spysweeper by any chance? If yes, then try unchecking the "Tracking Cookies" option under Web Browser Shields and/or uninstalling Spysweeper to see if the homepage problem goes away.

[paulinphila]

Tried disabling add-ons, recommended to someone else, and the start times issue went away.
Peculiar that Firefox add-ons would cause start-up problems in Firefox...

Tried disabling web broswer shields - tracking cookies, and that didn't work.
Then tried shutting Spysweeper down altogether, and that didn't help.

Would appreciate any other ideas.

[dickvl]

If starting in Safe-mode works then disable your extensions (Tools > Add-ons > Extensions or use the option in the Safe-mode window) and re-enable them one by one until you find which one is causing it.
Close and restart Firefox after each change.

[Paulinphila]

Extensions are already disabled.
Do not know how to start FF in safe mode...

[paulinphila]

Looking back over our comments, we may be on different pages.

The start time issue has gone away via disabling add-ons.

The homepage issue remains, even though I have disabled Spy Sweeper, after unchecking
"tracking cookies". Getting frustrating...

[dickvl]

You already wrote that disabling extensions worked.
Starting Firefox in safe-mode does the same (above posted by vl).

See: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode
1: Start > All Programs > Mozilla Firefox : Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)
2: Start > Run: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode

[paulinphila]

OK. started FF in safe mode, and got the original dialog noted in first comment.

Any idea how to get around this?

[dickvl]

I would normally do this first with that issue:
Clear the cookies ('problematic' site(s) only): Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: "Show Cookies"
Clear the cache: Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cache: "Clear Cache Now"

You may have to look at the cookie settings in Spy Sweeper:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=560924
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=562840
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 5&start=45

[paulinphila]

Dick,

Clearing all related cookies and clearing the cache seems to have done the trick for now...
FF now loading with my homepage.

Thanks for all the help - very much appreciated.

Paul

[dickvl]

You're welcome.

[paulinphila]

Dick,

FYI. I turned the Spysweeper tracking cookies shield back on and the problem (My Yahoo! home page doesn't load without sign-in every time) immediately returned! Turning them back off and redoing the clear cache/cookies brought things back to normal.

Therefore, all three steps are required:

1. Turn Spysweeper tracking cookies off
2. Clear all related cookies from FF
3. Clear FF cache

It was not necessary to shut down Spysweeper.

Incidently, I'm also running Trend Micro AntiVirus/AntiSpyware 2007 and Ad-Aware 2007.
They don't seem to bother FF.

Thanks again,

Paul

[dickvl]

You're welcome and thanks for the extra info about the steps that you needed to do.

[tjguitar]

This seems to have fixed the problem--but it creates another---the tracking cookie shield must be disabled in order for the few cookies that I want to be remembered, to be remembered. This was never a problem before? Can I downgrade to a previous version of FireFox?


thanks
TJ