Firefox newer than v63 randomly prevents new tabs loading
All was fine until I updated my firefox beyond v63. New tabs would randomly show dead blank pages and refuse to load anything. New tabs work about half the time, half the time unresponsive. Half the time opening firefox fresh wont respond unless I have done a system restart just before- then it always works every time. Its a real pain to copy the address from an unresponsive tab to paste into a working tab to view the page! When I reverted back to v63- everything worked fine again- except (of course) the Addon signing bug prevents my addons from working. I was happy to stay on v63 until the Addon signing bug happened- pages always loaded and addons had worked. So I have a dilemma- choose either: no addons working anymore in v63 but all tabs loading properly, or addons working normally in v67 but new tabs and the main program only working about half the time. Why cant I have both- working tabs and working addons. I have tried a firefox v67 reset to default, and then re-customised it & reloaded my addons but no fix. What is wrong? What has Mozilla done to cause the formerly working v63 to fail half the time somewhere between v63 and v67? How do I fix it?
All Replies (3)
Hello,
Please try using Firefox in Safe Mode to see if we can isolate the problem to a feature of Firefox.
Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
- Click the menu button
, click Help 
and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
- On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
- On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
- On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.
To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.
See also "For older versions of Firefox":
Yes- cor-el, I know about the "Add-ons disabled or fail to install on Firefox" bug. That is why I was forced to update from my v63 where tabs always worked to v67 where they now don't.
No- Hammotime, Starting in safe mode does not fix the unresponsive tabs opening roughly half the time. I had also previously disabled hardware acceleration to see if it influenced this behaviour- and it didn't. Hardware acceleration and addons are not the problem here. The problem only started after updating beyond v63. Rolling back to v63 the problem went away (but then the addon signing bug prevented my addons from working). What did Mozilla do after v63 which introduced this other dead tab bug?
See the pic below- I am in safe mode and of the 8 tabs, tabs 5 (which is selected) and 6 are both dead/ unresponsive (there were more but I closed them and reopened them to get tabs which worked so I could reply using tab 8)
