Firefox constantly freezing (flash, scripts, etc always stop working). Firefox is completely unusable.
For the past few months or so, Firefox has become completely unusable for me. About every five minutes or so, the browser freezes, and I have to kill the process in order to re-launch it. I've tried clean uninstall/reinstall, removing all add-ons, etc. Nothing seems to work. I've installed it on 4 of my computers, and it freezes on all of them (Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Professional, and Windows 10).
Has anybody had any luck fixing the instability, or am I just stuck with Chrome?
All Replies (9)
Many thousands use Firefox without such problems.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?
While still in Safe Mode,
Type about:support in the address bar and press Enter. Under the main banner, press the button; Copy Text To Clipboard.. Then in the reply box at the bottom of this page, do a right click in the box and select Paste. This will show us your system details. No Personal Information Is Collected.
Do you have any crash reports?
Some of your crash reports weren’t sent to the Mozilla Servers.
In the address bar, type about:crashes<enter>. Note: If any reports do not have BP in front of the numbers/letters, click it and select Submit.
The crash report is several pages of data. We need the report numbers to see the whole report.
Using your mouse, mark the most resent 7 - 10 crash reports, and copy them. Now go to the reply box below and paste them in.
Sometimes the protection programs cause isues. As a test, disable them.
Here's the support info:
Application Basics
Name: Firefox Version: 42.0 Build ID: 20151029151421 Update Channel: release User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0 Multiprocess Windows: 0/1 (default: false) Safe Mode: false
Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days
Report ID: bp-3f168307-531a-4039-aaff-c91f72151213 Submitted: 1 minute ago
All Crash Reports Extensions
Name: Adblock Plus Version: 2.6.13 Enabled: true ID: {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}
Name: LastPass Version: 3.2.40 Enabled: true ID: support@lastpass.com
Name: Tab Data Version: 0.5.8 Enabled: true ID: jid1-4ogjq7MUzAiCOw@jetpack
Graphics
Adapter Description: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 Adapter Drivers: nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um Adapter RAM: 1024 Asynchronous Pan/Zoom: none Device ID: 0x0f02 Direct2D Enabled: true DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.2.9200.17461) Driver Date: 7-2-2014 Driver Version: 9.18.13.4052 GPU #2 Active: false GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 11 (OMTC) Subsys ID: 27313842 Supports Hardware H264 Decoding: true Vendor ID: 0x10de WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE (NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0) windowLayerManagerRemote: true AzureCanvasBackend: direct2d 1.1 AzureContentBackend: direct2d 1.1 AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0
Important Modified Preferences
accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0 browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400 browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported: 1 browser.cache.disk.hashstats_reported: 1 browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 2 browser.download.importedFromSqlite: true browser.download.manager.alertOnEXEOpen: true browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7 browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20151029151421 browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20151029151421 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 42.0 dom.apps.reset-permissions: true dom.max_script_run_time: 20 dom.mozApps.used: true extensions.lastAppVersion: 42.0 font.internaluseonly.changed: false gfx.direct3d.last_used_feature_level_idx: 0 gfx.driver-init.appVersion: 42.0 gfx.driver-init.deviceID: 0x0f02 gfx.driver-init.driverVersion: 9.18.13.4052 gfx.driver-init.feature-d2d: true gfx.driver-init.feature-d3d11: true gfx.driver-init.status: 2 media.gmp-eme-adobe.abi: x86-msvc media.gmp-eme-adobe.lastUpdate: 1447252940 media.gmp-eme-adobe.version: 15 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.abi: x86-msvc media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate: 1447944313 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version: 1.5.1 media.gmp-manager.buildID: 20151029151421 media.gmp-manager.lastCheck: 1449987898 media.hardware-video-decoding.failed: false network.auth.allow-subresource-auth: 2 network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true network.predictor.cleaned-up: true places.database.lastMaintenance: 1449590098 places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858 plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf plugin.importedState: true
These go back to May(ish). I usually don't let Firefox get to the point of crashing since I usually run taskkill /f /im firefox.exe as soon as the programs stops responding.
bp-3f168307-531a-4039-aaff-c91f72151213 ec53bc5d-9956-4f8a-9042-5effa67c9b90 b492407e-bf70-4253-9778-53702808e94f cfa29cf0-9bc3-4e03-8e9b-5cadd7fd960c eb8da79b-f2c2-4bf6-978b-a7f069fa34ed bd215eaa-f8e8-4af2-b252-6fd304409a3d
Signature F1398665248
Process Type plugin Shockwave Flash Version: 20.0.0.235
Attention Sumo's there are 20 related bug reports. Most are about flash.
Use this link to check that your plugins are up-to-date. If any are listed as unknown or research, do not worry about them.
If you have problems with current Shockwave Flash plugin versions then check this:
- see if there are updates for your graphics drivers
https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration
- disable protected mode in the Flash plugin (Flash 11.3+ on Windows Vista and later)
https://forums.adobe.com/message/4468493#TemporaryWorkaround
- disable hardware acceleration in the Flash plugin
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337 See also:
I made those changes, and it seemed to work for a few days. However, Firefox is back to freezing.
Today I've had it open for about 5 hours and it got to the point where it was using 1,010,500K memory in the task manager. If I tried to click on anything, it would white-screen and stop responding for anywhere from 30 - 60 seconds before it appeared to recover.
Once it had started responding, as soon as I clicked anything or opened a page it would immediately freeze again.
Any other ideas out there?
If the browser starts to stall, use one of these to restart the browser This is not a cure, this is just until the problem is solved.
Restart {web link} "Restart" menu and button, with configurable shortcut key.
Restart Button {web link}
Restart button for Firefox
Restartless Restart {web link}
This 15KB restartless add-on will add a "File" -> "Restart"
menu item and a ctrl/cmd + alt + r hotkey to restart Firefox
or Seamonkey.
Are there any known issues as to why the memory gets so far out of control? It seems that even when it's just started, it immediately jumps to 300,000+ in the task manager. After approximately 10 minutes, it'll be to 500,000.
As a test, disable your protection programs. Then login to a secured site for a while. Is the problem still there?
As a test, disable LastPass.
storm311 said
Are there any known issues as to why the memory gets so far out of control?
Many of those turn out to be from other programs.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/websites-look-wrong-or-appear-differently
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding