Firefox 13 hangs when opening in XP SP3.
I have two machines running XP SP3. Both exhibit this behavior. Firefox 13 opens successfully, but when I select a bookmark (for example, Google), the program responds "Waiting for Google.com", waits about five seconds, and then becomes completely unresponsive. If I click the "X" to close the program, Windows responds with the typical "Not responding" prompt. But if I attempt to open a SECOND instance of Firefox, then not only does the first suddenly spring back to life, but the second is fine, too.
This problem started after my first installation of FF13. Did not occur with FF12.
Problem does NOT exist on my Vista machine with FF13.
All Replies (6)
Hi,
Please check if this happens in Safe Mode. Safe mode disables the installed Extensions, and themes (Appearance) in Tools (Alt + T) > Add-ons. Hardware acceleration is also temporarily disabled - the manual setting is Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Use hardware acceleration when available. All these settings/options/add-ons can also be individually or collectively disabled/enabled/changed in Firefox normal mode to check if an extension, theme, option or hardware acceleration is causing issues. Disabling/enabling hardware acceleration, and some types of add-ons in normal mode may require a Firefox restart.
Great; I finally get around to contacting support about the problem, and now this morning I cannot get the machine to misbehave. I'll keep trying and report back once it happens again. In the mean time, how do I get Firefox to start in Safe mode without first opening it in normal mode? The instructions say to hold the Shift key down while starting Firefox, but I can't get that to work. Thanks.
Edit: Figured it out -- have to hold the Shift key down all the time that Firefox is opening, not just when clicking on the shortcut.
Modified by gberchin
Update: Yes, it happens in Safe Mode. Problem always happens during the very first opening of Firefox after the computer is booted, and usually (but not always) when opening Firefox from within another application (such as double-clicking an URL that is included in an email message). Once Firefox has established an Internet connection, that connection is good until the computer is rebooted, even if Firefox is closed and reopened multiple times.
You can try to set No proxy in Tools (Alt + T) > Options > Advanced > Network > Settings.
Thanks. For the moment, changing from "Use system proxy settings" to "No proxy" seems to have solved the problem. I'll report back later if I discover that it did not.
No problem :) Thanks for the update.