Firefox hangs just after clicking on a link on a page, any page.

Windows task manager shows twenty to thirty+ instances, when only half as many pages are open.

I doubt that it will make a difference but you could opt out of the fission experiment which would reduce the number of processes. Change the preference fission.autostart to false in about:config. You will probably still see more processes than you expect. Firefox has its own Task Manager (Tools > Browser Tools > Task Manager or about:performance) as well as about:processes and about:memory.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project_Fission https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox

Thanks Terry, I followed your instruction, and will update here.

Much less instances of firefox show in win10 task mgr. after switch now fission=false, but firefox hangs still once or twice per day.

Yes, that change was unlikely to make a difference. This article may help.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding

I followed those before posting here originally, but will look over again. Apparently my case is unusual. Hopefully the error reports will provide clues to mozilla. I give up. Thanks for the help.

You could try creating a new profile. You can do that with Firefox closed if you prefer.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles#w_start-the-profile-manager-when-firefox-is-closed https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#w_what-information-is-stored-in-my-profile