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Autofill in both the awesome bar and any other area where I have to fill in something freezes the browser completely. Why?

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My OS is Windows 7 Professional. Whenever I type in an address into the awesome bar, or any other area where an autofill function may pop out, the browser image freezes. For instance, if I type http://youtube.com/ and the autofill comes out at http://y but not at o, the autofill retracts back into the bar, but the entire browser image freezes unless I minimize the window from full screen to a smaller window and back again. This is decidedly NOT awesome. How can it be fixed?

My OS is Windows 7 Professional. Whenever I type in an address into the awesome bar, or any other area where an autofill function may pop out, the browser image freezes. For instance, if I type http://youtube.com/ and the autofill comes out at http://y but not at o, the autofill retracts back into the bar, but the entire browser image freezes unless I minimize the window from full screen to a smaller window and back again. This is decidedly NOT awesome. How can it be fixed?

All Replies (8)

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hello, please go to firefox > help > about firefox, update to version 20.0.1 and see if this can address the issue.

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I am already using version 20.0.1. I have uninstalled and reinstalled several times, and have even gone and restored my computer to before the install of firefox before reinstalling. This problem persist.

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please also try to reset firefox and see if this can address the issue...

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No, the problem persists. It's like the entire browser freezes now until I minimize and maximize the window again.

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Deleting my places.sqlite database did not fix the issue. I don't know what everyone thinks the issue is, but it seemed to happen while I was installing my addons. It's not the autofill itself that's the issue. It's like the entire browser appears to freeze until I shrink the window to a smaller one. I thought it was a problem with flash, but I had the problem even without flash installed. I don't have any addons in Firefox right now. Imagine that you type a URL into the awesome bar, the autofill for it briefly flashes and then it appears no characters are appearing on your awesome bar as you type them. You click on several other open tabs, those don't seem to respond either. The only thing that responds is the little tile windows tab. You click on it, the window shrinks from full screen to a smaller window, the last tab you clicked on comes to the front, you go back to the tab you were typing your URL in and that has filled in as if it were working just fine. It's like the image of the browser gets stuck somehow. I was having this problem in Chrome, and now I seem to be having it in Firefox as well.

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window or otherwise make changes.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

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Turning off hardware acceleration seems to have alleviated the problem. Thank you.