This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Why does Clear All History take so long?

  • 4 replies
  • 5 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

jnygren
jnygren
more options

I like to clear my browse history frequently (daily). With recent releases, this takes a very long time. I frequently get an "Unresponsive script" warning. The message is: 

  A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responnding. You can stop the script 
  now. or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

  Script: chrome://browser/content/sanitize.js:133

Why is this taking so long?

I like to clear my browse history frequently (daily). With recent releases, this takes a very long time. I frequently get an "Unresponsive script" warning. The message is: A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responnding. You can stop the script now. or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: chrome://browser/content/sanitize.js:133 Why is this taking so long?

All Replies (4)

finitarry
finitarry
more options

Does the delay happen in Firefox safe mode? It could be an extension causing the delay.

jnygren
jnygren Question owner
more options

I am not aware that Firefox has a safe mode. (How do you enable/start it?)

The problem seems to happen most often if I have visited a lot of sites/pages during the current session or since the last time I cleared my browser history. I'm not sure I would want to do that much surfing without the protection of some of my extensions enabled.

Thanks. I appreciate your reply.

finitarry
finitarry
more options

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

There is more than one way to start safe mode, but the easiest way these days is to use Help > Restart with add-ons disabled.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Are you doing that via History > Clear Recent History ?

Are you only clearing the history or are you clearing more items (cookies, cache)?
If you clear more items then try to select only one of them to see if you can isolate the cause.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox Profile Folder.