Hello.

I have myself experienced this issue, and, in my case, restarting the browser will fix it. It's very rare, but it's possible that we are having a problem with some Firefox add-on that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. Have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

Whenever you have a problem with Firefox, whatever it is, you should make sure it's not caused by one (or more than one) of your installed add-ons, be it an extension, a theme or a plugin. To do that easily and cleanly, run Firefox in safe mode (don't forget to select Disable all add-ons when you start safe mode). If the problem disappears, you know it's from an add-on. Disable them all in normal mode, and enable them one at a time until you find the source of the problem. See this article for information about troubleshooting extensions and themes and this one for plugins.

If you need support for one of your add-ons, you'll have to contact its author.

If the problem is not disappears when all add-ons are disabled, please tell me, so we can work from there. Please have no fear of following my instructions to the line, as all can be easily undone.

I haven't tried it myself (well, safe mode without add-ons makes it go away, in my case), because it doesn't bother you, but if you have the same problem as I do, it's definitely an problematic add-on.

This also happened to me earlier today; very odd behavior that was somehow linked to a very large file, approximately 1.3 GB, that I was downloading. It started out fine, but I would say after about 5 minutes of downloading is when this problem started happening. In fact, not only would the animations and flash videos only work when the mouse was moved, but the same also was true of the file download; it would only progress so long as I moved the mouse about in the file download message window. Once I terminated the download and restarted the browser the problem disappeared. I am running the most up to date versions of both Firefox and Flash with Windows 7. I have not had this problem since then even when downloading other files, but I will post here again if I do.

I JUST downloaded/installed Firefox4 last night and ever since then I've had this problem. Things just wont load/play (not only videos but flash stuff and entire web pages wont load) unless I move my mouse constantly, as soon as I stop moving my mouse, everything stops. It's a bug with the new Firefox 4, I've never had this problem with previous versions. It's a bug they need to fix ASAP because now I have to use Internet Explorer again *gag* and I can't find an older setup file of Firefox to return to the previous version that WORKED. They better fix this soon!

And it's a constant problem - not "RARE." It happens every time I use the browser - it's a bug.

I'm also having the same problem with firefox 4! It drives me mad! I am building my website right now and every time I test it using firefox I thought that my website is buggy because it's so slow when loading, later I found that if I moved my mouse or clicked the mouse repeatedly, my website will load normally. And the worst is it's not just my website, even when I do searching in google and I clicked a website, it will not load until I moved my mouse..... Come on guys, even IE does not have this problem..... the previous version does not have this problem, firefox 4 does.

Hi, I'm a FF user since years, I've recently noticed this problem too, sites stop loading unless I move the mouse (I notice this because the green loading animation near the current tab stops loading unless I move the mouse), this happens a lot even on this site.

I tried uninstalling firefox and downloading the latest version and still the same problem appears.

Also please note that I had Firefox beta 4.0 previously installed, may that will help troubleshooting the problem.

I think it's solved, you need to go to Addons page, and disable the addon called "Test Pilot 1.1.1" and then restart firefox.

hope this helps someone.

i fix mine by downloading an earlier version of FF until they fix this bug
here is the link for the earlier version:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html

Hi - This is an awful problem, which I have had for about a year using FireFox 3.x and then 4.x in Win 7 64 bit. Don't understand why FireFox cannot fix this problem, it does not happen with Opera. Anyway, I wanted to try and help others since apparently FireFox / Mozilla will not.

1. If you start FireFox in "safe" mode without add-ons active, the problem should be gone.

2. I went to the FireFox Add-ons page and disabled various plugins and extensions one by one. (For most extensions you need to re-start FireFox for it to be disabled.) Turns out I am pretty sure it was Norton IPS 1.0 that was causing the problem, where data would not come in over the internet unless I moved my mouse a little bit. My HP laptop came with many things pre-installed, and I am pretty sure Norton IPS 1.0 was added automatically to FireFox, it is not something that I consciously installed. (If it matters, I have _not_ tried Norton IPS 2.0)

Hope this helps someone, maybe in FireFox 5.0 they will finally fix this...

- TWR, Redondo Beach, California

Hi -

You can download small programs that continuously move the mouse pointer.

This is another solution, but it does not fix the actual problem. I found a freeware program called MouseJiggle for Windows that when running simply moves the mouse pointer back and forth a tiny amount about once per second. (There are many other similar programs available online, intended to simulate user activity so Windows does not log out the current session or go into standby mode etc.) I understand this is not a real fix, but at least you won't have to move the mouse yourself to get web sites to load in FireFox.

- TWR, Redondo Beach, California

tomr,

      I have this same problem you guys are having.  My web pages aren't loading until I move the mouse.  I disagree that Norton IPS 1.0 Adon is the issue in FF, because I don't use that Adon, and I'm having the same issue.  I saw Happy mentioned the Test Pilot 1.1.1 Adon, and I'm not using that Adon either and I still have to move the mouse in-order for a webpage to load.  You guys Are making good points.  I just thought I better let you guys know.  

SmokeyJoe

I disabled all add-ons and the problem disappeared - FF 5.0

I haven't taken the time to re-enable them one-by-one to locate the culprit, however.

I have the same problem, but only on my Win7 laptop. When I disabled the add-ons, it worked for about half a day; now it is back doing it again -- even with add-ons disabled. This is tremendously annoying. Planning to revert to previous version. If that doesn't work, I will be pulling up stakes (i.e., changing browsers).

Same here on firefox 5, websites doesn't load until I move the mouse around the screen, if i stop moving the mouse the loading stops and resume when I move the mouse around again.. odd..

I too have noticed this problem multiple times with Firefox 4-7, usually when I've left the browser open for several days without restarting it. It also makes scrolling with the mouse wheel impossibly laggy/stuttery. I have a hunch the problem is caused by the extension Mouse Gestures (Redox).. is anyone else in here using this addon?

I think this is supposedly fixed in upcoming Firefox 8, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627084.

Related SUMO issues: http://support.mozilla.com/lt/questions/743870 and https://support.mozilla.com/lt/questions/816998.

I fixed this by removing Java from my system (I had three entries in my program list) and then installing the latest Java. I found this by asking Firefox to check for updates for my plugins and Java came up as an "update now". So I did. Worked for me.

I disabled all the ad-ons and that did not fix it. I did not uninstall Java, just reinstalled it and that fixed it. Now I will put back my ad-ons to be sure.

HI all,

Happy84k fixed it for me, disable testpilot. Problem solved. Hurray for the internets!

@fredkadet Are you sure it actually solved the problem? Because when disabling TestPilot, it asks you to restart FF. And restarting FF is a temporary fix that'll help in almost every case. But it always comes back. More for some people than others. I've previously disabled all add-ons and it's made no difference whatsoever. So I'm having a hard time believing that the disabling of TestPilot is a valid solution. I have my own topic up about this exact issue back in March. [https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/que.../801034]