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Firefox stuck in attempting to load previously open tabs, at start-up

  • 5 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 17 views
  • Last reply by StevenCee

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Every time I open Firefox, my open windows open, as they should, except the front tabs in as many as half of windows get stuck trying to open! The screen is blank, and you can see the spinning wheel in the tab window above the toolbar. Usually, if I click to stop it, then hit the refresh button, it will finally load the tab. Why can't they all just load, for while they don't, FF will still run up nearly all my RAM, maybe trying to load takes more juice. I don't know, but it's not supposed to be doing this. Opening tabs if a pretty fundamental function of any browser...

Every time I open Firefox, my open windows open, as they should, except the front tabs in as many as half of windows get stuck trying to open! The screen is blank, and you can see the spinning wheel in the tab window above the toolbar. Usually, if I click to stop it, then hit the refresh button, it will finally load the tab. Why can't they all just load, for while they don't, FF will still run up nearly all my RAM, maybe trying to load takes more juice. I don't know, but it's not supposed to be doing this. Opening tabs if a pretty fundamental function of any browser...

All Replies (5)

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You could set to open all tabs on demand to make starting as fast as possible. There are two on_demand prefs on the about:config page that control this (ignore services.sync.prefs.sync as those are about syncing prefs).

  • browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand = true
  • browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand = true
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Does it still happen in Troubleshoot Mode?

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Cor-El, what does configuring, using those options do, and how is one different from the other? I have it set in preferences to open with all my previously open windows/tabs, etc. But the front tab on almost all the windows only has a blank page, with the spinning wheel in the tab wheel, forcing me to have to stop the loading then refresh it, and I would imagine having 20 or so tabs constantly attempting to load, endlessly, must be using up a lot of RAM. As Firefox sure seems to be RAM hungry, even when I'm not doing anything data intensive, like streaming, etc.

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With those prefs set to true then the tabs load only when you select this tab, so if you have a lot of tabs to restore when you start Firefox then restoring them only when you select one will speed up the startup as you do not need to wait until they all have loaded. There will be a short delay (you may see a spinner) when you select a tab that hasn't been loaded yet.

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Well, that's not quite how it's working. When I open Firefox, most all the front tabs in each window open, and not only do they open, but if there's any videos they automatically begin playing!! This is not what I'd like to see happen, especially when two or three play at once. Plus, to make matters worse, they begin playing even before the window is even close to fully loading, so there's no controls showing, so I can't click on the Pause or Stop button, but must listen to it all until finally the video controls appear! Why start playing before it's even fully loaded??

And why do some screens go to sleep, and quickly, so that when I follow a link somewhere, and then go back, as soon as I click on the window, it reloads, thus losing my place, and anything that was showing, no longer is! This is especially true with Facebook, yet other windows will simply respond or not, depending on what I do, not instantly refresh, when that's not what I want it to do, at all, especially if I've begun writing something, which gets erased, all because I went to a different page for five or ten minutes!