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Firefox slow, laggy, choppy performance on powerful PC. Other browsers working fine. Help?

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  • Valiny farany nomen'i FredMcD

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i7 930 @ 3.8GHz, 6GB RAM@1600MHz, Intel SSD and Nvidia 660 Ti 2GB. That's my PC. It starts up in seconds, it's 100% stable, can run any video/audio production software with ease, and play any game at high/max settings.

But somehow, Firefox doesn't seem to care. It keeps freezing up, lagging, and driving me crazy in the process. I've tried everything: reinstalling, resetting FF, removing addons, reinstalling addons, doing clean installs.... nothing. I've tried chrome. Works fine. IE even works better than FF.

All this started in the last year or two. Slowly. I've felt each version getting slower and slower, and now it's just ridiculous. I open like 10 tabs and FF grinds to a halt, it takes 5-10 seconds for it to un-freeze sometimes. And facebook timeline scrolling?! forget about it. the more you scroll, the worse the freezing gets, to the point where I'm forced to restart FF and start all over again!

I've been with FF since v1, I've watched it grow into the best browser of all, but I've also watched chrome rightfully take that title away in the last few years, because of what FF has turned into.

I'd much rather stick with FF, but the frustration is getting out of hand. I can't take the slow and buggy performance, and I can't seem to find a solution.

So is there a way to make firefox work as it should on a fast PC, or do I have to switch to chrome to get the performance back?


(Win7 x64 SP1, ADSL 20 MBit)

i7 930 @ 3.8GHz, 6GB RAM@1600MHz, Intel SSD and Nvidia 660 Ti 2GB. That's my PC. It starts up in seconds, it's 100% stable, can run any video/audio production software with ease, and play any game at high/max settings. But somehow, Firefox doesn't seem to care. It keeps freezing up, lagging, and driving me crazy in the process. I've tried everything: reinstalling, resetting FF, removing addons, reinstalling addons, doing clean installs.... nothing. I've tried chrome. Works fine. IE even works better than FF. All this started in the last year or two. Slowly. I've felt each version getting slower and slower, and now it's just ridiculous. I open like 10 tabs and FF grinds to a halt, it takes 5-10 seconds for it to un-freeze sometimes. And facebook timeline scrolling?! forget about it. the more you scroll, the worse the freezing gets, to the point where I'm forced to restart FF and start all over again! I've been with FF since v1, I've watched it grow into the best browser of all, but I've also watched chrome rightfully take that title away in the last few years, because of what FF has turned into. I'd much rather stick with FF, but the frustration is getting out of hand. I can't take the slow and buggy performance, and I can't seem to find a solution. So is there a way to make firefox work as it should on a fast PC, or do I have to switch to chrome to get the performance back? (Win7 x64 SP1, ADSL 20 MBit)

All Replies (2)

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As I have seen That you have installed so much extension which is the main reason behind the slowness. Since they need some memory each time you start working with firefox. However do try to disable those extensions which are not used regularly ,when you need to used them just enable from addons section. Also try with Safe Mode and check whether the problem still persist or not. Read This Thread : Many CPU Processes

These are some steps will help you to fix issues like slowness:

If monitoring tools shows High ram used by firefox then it might be due to Hardware acceleration enabled . Uncheck them from Options>Advance >under General tab. Sometimes plugins becomes the cause,so Check whether all plugins are up to dated or not from Addons >Plugins tab.

See this thread for other reasons : http://mzl.la/14CBA3o

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https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} While you are in safe mode;

Type about:preferences#advanced<Enter> in the address bar.

Under Advanced, Select General. Look for and turn off Use Hardware Acceleration.

Poke around safe web sites. Are there any problems?