Firefox Is Slowing Down My PC

[Matthew]

Recently Firefox has slowed my pc down and at points it has stopped for a minute or two. When I click bookmarks it halts and then I try again and it works.

My PC is 1GB, 2.4Ghz processor, Win XP SP2, all patches.

Can someone help as I do not want to format.

[Richard M]

Try disabling extensions one at a time to find the cause of the problem.

[Paul K]

As Rich says, disable extensions and any themes running and see what happens. It could be a corrupted extension or theme causing a problem. Also, ctrl+alt+del and check your memory and processor usage when things bog down.

[Matthew]

I have tried that and the only extension I have left is the CF one and I have taken it off and put it back on.

Just been watching the performace graph in task manager and I have got next to nothing running so I think it is something pc related. I am going to track it this evening and I might reformat as I've been runnnig this setup since the end of May.

[LemonyBrainAid]

Try booting firefox in safe mode (there should be an option to do so under All Programs > Mozilla Firefox.

This will boot firefox in safe mode - not using any extensions or extra themes.

If it runs fast(er) on safe mode, try uninstalling some of your extensions - or, as Richard says, disabling them one at a time.

If you find the pages aren't loading as fast as you would like it to - try using this little trick.

1: Type "about:config" into your address bar and wait for it to load.
2: Alter the following entries:
change "network.http.pipelining" to "true", "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" and "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to 30.

This will enable your pipelining for http requests, proxy requests and it will change the max requests for the pipelining to 30.

Hope this helped.

[Paul K]

Performance graph? It's probably easier to pinpoint problems by watching the process page, you'll be able to see exactly what process is using the processor or RAM heavily when your system is crawling.

[Matthew]

Explorer.exe is using the most in the task manager. I think its an issue with my pc so I am going to format.

[Paul K]

Strange, when it all slows down the only thing using any significant amount of RAM or CPU is explorer? Are you running any themes/ skinning software etc or have any third party apps installed that could be affecting explorer?

[Matthew]

I did install some theme/skining software and I uninstalled it and after that my pc slowed down. The themes are still in the list and I did install that file from Neowin that allows you to do it. Is this what is causing the slow down?

[Paul K]

Could be a problem with explorer caused by the skinning being done/ undone. Is explorer the only thing hitting your resources during the slow downs though? If it is then you may be best off formatting to get your system back to a clean and healthy state again. It may not be needed though.

[Matthew]

I'll format, its not going to hurt anything and will give me something to do and clean my system up. Been 4 months since this setup was installed.

Thanks for the advice about the extensions which could of saved me time but this time it wasnt.

[altis]

I've had Firefox go into suspended animation when I bookmarked a page that was over a VPN link. Every time I clicked on 'bookmarks' and moved the cursor down the list, it would stop for ages on one particular folder. Inside was the bookmark to another PC over the VPN tunnel.

It could be something similar. Take a copy of your current bookmarks in 'Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\summat\bookmarks.htm l'. Then try deleting some of your recent ones.

[nffc]

Clear the history.

[Matthew]

It's not browsing that is slow its the actual program but I've narrowed it down to been my computer.

[fisheddie]

how about a quick disk defragment and clean up

or use one of those system utility from download.com