Firefox not responding

fifeken

For the last few weeks Firefox has intermittently been hanging up on me and displaying "Not Responding" at the top of the screen. This lasts for anything between 5 and 30 seconds and then everything is back to normal again. Any ideas or suggestions please?

I'm running Firefox 3.6.17 and Vista 6.0 SP2.

RussJK

Does it happen with certain pages, or with certain content? e.g. PDFs, flash media, games, image intensive pages, etc? Or is it fairly random?

How frequently does it occur?

Could be an addon mucking up - so try disabling them all, and see how well things run. Keep re-enabling them one by one, testing them and see how you go.

System wide, do you run the computer on battery or plugged in? Do you have the computer on the High Performance power plan? Do you have a lot of programs running?

Open task manager (CTRL + SHIFT + ESC) and go to Processes tab, and see if anything stands out as using a lot of CPU time. Go to Performance, and please write the Commit Charge. Should be something like Commit (MB) xxxx / xxxx

closed

backup bookmarks and reinstall it, if it continues check elsewhere, run a malwarebytes scan, if you use a third party firewall, switch to windows firewall

fifeken

It seems pretty random so far and occurs maybe once an hour.

I run it plugged in on the HP Recommended Power Plan and never much running.

Nothing showing in Task Manager but I suppose I would have to look when Firefox is misbehaving.

There's no Commit Charge reading in Task Manager. The only thing I see in the format you describe is Page File 1378M / 4202M.

I'll try what you said with add-ons.

Thanks.

fifeken

closed wrote: »

backup bookmarks and reinstall it, if it continues check elsewhere, run a malwarebytes scan, if you use a third party firewall, switch to windows firewall

Is there an easy way to backup bookmarks?

RussJK

fifeken wrote: »

There's no Commit Charge reading in Task Manager. The only thing I see in the format you describe is Page File 1378M / 4202M. I'll try what you said with add-ons.
Thanks.

No worries, that shows you aren't overdoing things with memory.

If the problem is seemingly random but repeatable within a reasonable timeframe, then an alternative is to try a portable version of Firefox, and see if you get the same error. It'll eliminate your specific profile as the problem.

Firefox 4 portable:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Firefox 3.6 portable:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/localization#legacy35

spud17

fifeken wrote: »

Is there an easy way to backup bookmarks?

Bookmarks/Organise Bookmarks/Import and Backup/Export HTML.

Then save it e.g. create a folder in Documents called Bookmarks, add the date to the file you save, do it regularly.

Or use the brilliant add-on Xmarks. This synchronises and backs up your Bookmarks on their servers, for FREE.:)

Steve-o

fifeken wrote: »

For the last few weeks Firefox has intermittently been hanging up on me and displaying "Not Responding" at the top of the screen. This lasts for anything between 5 and 30 seconds and then everything is back to normal again. Any ideas or suggestions please?

I'm running Firefox 3.6.17 and Vista 6.0 SP2.

I get the same problem occasionally, and have done for a long time. It's usually when a complicated page is loading, or slow to download. It's a pain in the butt, but something I've come to ignore.

free4440273

update to the latest FF //

fifeken

free4440273 wrote: »

update to the latest FF //

I'd thought about that but FF 4 has been getting some bad reviews so I was reluctant to do it.

aliEnRIK

I get it, mostly due to me always having a silly number of tabs open
Ive noticed it sometimes does it if something else is using a lot of the CPU

Still, maybe you should check out your addons etc to try and lighten the load - id also recommend firefox 4 (Takes a little geting used to, but I do prefer it)