Ditto on Jen's problem with the new v89 release.

I'm running it on a Thinkpad E545 with current/updated Windows 10. Huge swap file and 8GB of memory. No software/hardware changes were made before or after the update to the new v89 release.

It takes forever (several to 5mins) to load or start-up. Task Manager shows single digit CPU Utilization while it's loading but jumps to double-digit CPU and memory utilization once loaded. Also, there are multiple instances running beside the main one which alone as several sub-instances (3-8) running. Once loaded, some websites will take forever to load or will not load at all. When loaded, some websites are slow to respond (including keyboard entries on email websites) and will often lock-up/freeze and not respond at all. This makes no difference whether I have one or multiple tabs open. Closing and restarting Firefox will sometimes resolve the problem. Other times, Firefox will appear to straighten itself out and work OK.

The problem is so bad that I have NOT upgraded my other devices (desktop PC's and notebook) to the current Firefox v89 release. They're running the previous release and work perfectly. I checked and it's a long & involved process to go back to the previous release. Nevertheless, I'm seriously considering it for the laptop that I have v89 loaded on.

The new release is sub-par and needs to be fixed ASAP!!!

Start Firefox using Troubleshoot(Safe) Mode {web link}

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Troubleshoot(Safe) Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?

Hi Fred McD, Thanks for the heads-up about troubleshoot mode. I'd forgotten about that mode. This is my second attempt a posting a reply. It choked after I hit the Post Reply button, lost everthing that I'd typed and told me to try again.

Using troubleshooting mode, Firefox seemed to load slightly quicker and web pages also took lest time to load but it was still slow. This is measured by perception only as I wasn't timing it with a clock. The main difference with troubleshoot mode is the disabling of extensions ,etc. So, I did the same with my verson.

As noted in my original post, there were multiple instances of Firefox running, in addition to the sub-content processes. See first screen print below. I thought this may be a factor. I unchecked the recommended performance box and the use hardware acceleration box and set the content process limit to 6. After restarting Firefox, it loaded much faster in a fraction of the previous times. Web pages loaded faster, although site navigation still hangs periodically as does keyboarding but I can live with that. The number of Firefox instances is reduced to 1 but the number of content processes jumped to 8 (even though I set a limit of 6).

Firefox is still slower than before and stil has some problems. But as I noted above, I can live with it on my laptop. I'm still holding off on upgrading to the current release on all of my other devices.

Thanks again for your help. Hope this repy will post.

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

• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/
• https://www.7tutorials.com/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

. . . there were multiple instances of Firefox running

More than one process is normal for the current Firefox. http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/22/multi-process-firefox/

Multi-process Firefox is codenamed "e10s". https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/multiprocess

FredMcD,

I already know about the multi-process (Electrolysis) that was rolled out many years ago.

Take a look at the first screen print that I provided. There is the main Firefox shell that contains four sub or "e10" processes running under it. You will also see below that main shell THREE additional independent Firefox instances running. That's the problem.

Take a look at the second screen print for after I changed the performance settings and you will see ONLY ONE main Firefox shell running that has 8 sub or "e10" processes running under it.

In all Multi-Processing versions prior to v89, there was only ONE main Firefox shell running multiple sub or "e10" processes under it..

Val