Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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.

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

Firefox very slow after refresh or re-install .

more options

Recently Firefox has become very slow to load pages. It starts up OK but is very slow to open the first page on a website, often over a minute. Once the first page opens however it will open links perfectly OK. It doesn't matter whether it's a bookmark I visit often or the first time I visit s website it's still very slow to open the first page.

I've tried everything I know (several times); I've uninstalled & re-installed Firefox, created a new profile, loaded in Safe Mode, removed all add-ons and re-installed them one by one and refreshed Firefox. Each method corrects it initially so I leave it a while then re-install each add-on in turn. I let it run for a day or so with each add-on and each time it runs fine. Until I get all add-ons re-installed! It always runs OK for a day or two (or sometimes longer) then it suddenly slows down again and will remain slow until I do one of the above again.

I'm running the latest version of Windows 10 and Firefox Quantum and I've also disabled the antimalware in Windows Defender but that's made no difference. By comparison I don't have any problems with either Chrome or Edge?

Any suggestions please?

Recently Firefox has become very slow to load pages. It starts up OK but is very slow to open the first page on a website, often over a minute. Once the first page opens however it will open links perfectly OK. It doesn't matter whether it's a bookmark I visit often or the first time I visit s website it's still very slow to open the first page. I've tried everything I know (several times); I've uninstalled & re-installed Firefox, created a new profile, loaded in Safe Mode, removed all add-ons and re-installed them one by one and refreshed Firefox. Each method corrects it initially so I leave it a while then re-install each add-on in turn. I let it run for a day or so with each add-on and each time it runs fine. Until I get all add-ons re-installed! It always runs OK for a day or two (or sometimes longer) then it suddenly slows down again and will remain slow until I do one of the above again. I'm running the latest version of Windows 10 and Firefox Quantum and I've also disabled the antimalware in Windows Defender but that's made no difference. By comparison I don't have any problems with either Chrome or Edge? Any suggestions please?

Chosen solution

It was the New Tab Homepage add-on that was causing it. I've removed it and replaced it with New tab Override and all's well now.

In fact it's never been so fast. Clearly I've had an issue for some time without realising. It wasn't until it became so slow it was virtually unusable that I took any action. I can't believe how fast it is now.

Thanks to those who offered assistance, much appreciated.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (7)

more options

Hi Rod, Looking at your System Details, the first thing that caught my eye is the four-year-old graphics driver. Try updating the driver to see if that helps and get back to us.

Here is a link to AMD Support: https://www.amd.com/en/support

more options

My_Cheese_Is_Slippin' said

Hi Rod, Looking at your System Details, the first thing that caught my eye is the four-year-old graphics driver. Try updating the driver to see if that helps and get back to us. Here is a link to AMD Support: https://www.amd.com/en/support

Thanks but the latest driver is still nearly 4 years old! Nevertheless, I've installed the latest version but it doesn't seem to have made any difference at this stage.

more options

You mentioned that the problem doesn't occur until you get all add-ons installed. Take a closer look at New Tab Homepage, Open bookmarks in new tab and Open Link in New Tab running together. I'm suspecting some sort of conflict there.

more options

Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support to see if that has effect in case security software is causing problems.

more options

Thanks cor-el but it looks like it was a couple of add-ons getting in each others way. I've disabled them and, for now at least, it's solved the problem.

more options

Chosen Solution

It was the New Tab Homepage add-on that was causing it. I've removed it and replaced it with New tab Override and all's well now.

In fact it's never been so fast. Clearly I've had an issue for some time without realising. It wasn't until it became so slow it was virtually unusable that I took any action. I can't believe how fast it is now.

Thanks to those who offered assistance, much appreciated.

more options

FF 69 upgraded to FF 70; Win 7 Home Premium; Avast Free AV 19.8.2393 (build 19.8.4793.541); no FF Add-Ons

When my PC upgraded (automatically) from FF 69 to FF 70 I started to get this symptom: when the first instance of FF was started, there was a delay of about 15 seconds between the FF window (incl button and bookmark bars) appearing and the page opening.

Additionally, for the BBC News page www.bbc.co.uk/news (which is my Home Page), I got an error

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to www.bbc.co.uk. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.

If I press "Reload" on that error page, the web page loads fine.

The problem only affected the first page to be loaded (all subsequent pages load fine) and did not affect a second instance of FF that was subsequently opened.

I tried:

  • refresh profile (create a new one)
  • run FF in safe mode
  • start Win 7 in safe mode
  • disable Shields Control in Avast

but to no avail.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/dnp469/firefox_70_upgrade_cause_first_webpage_to_load/

reports an interaction between FF 70 and Avast, with a registry fix

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Policies/Mozilla/Firefox/Certificates

change ImportEnterpriseRoots from 1 to 0

Which works for me, but there is the warning that the key may spontaneously revert to 1.

Modified by martin.underwood464