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Why does Firefox periodically drag along when opening a site or typing? The mouse also drags. HELP!!!

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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1. Today as I am typing this, what I am typing does not keep up with my speed (and I am not a speedy typist). 2. Periodically, Firefox is very slow in loading the entries I want to see. The circle just keeps circling, first in black and then green. Sometimes it is so slow that I am timed out. 3. The third problem is that the mouse does not move smoothly and jerks as I move around the page.

1. Today as I am typing this, what I am typing does not keep up with my speed (and I am not a speedy typist). 2. Periodically, Firefox is very slow in loading the entries I want to see. The circle just keeps circling, first in black and then green. Sometimes it is so slow that I am timed out. 3. The third problem is that the mouse does not move smoothly and jerks as I move around the page.

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.


Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also: