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Firefox hangs shortly after starting

  • 4 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by user752960

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Recently updated to FF19 for Windows. Today FF started hanging within 10 seconds of starting. The menus worked, but that was about all. I could click the Window close control, but when the confirm close dialog would appear (if I managed to open a tab or two before FF hung) the dialog box would be blank. FF is the only app exhibiting this problem. It works fine in safe mode. I disabled all add-ons and plug-ins. Same problem. I uninstalled FF19 and then installed FF18.0.2. Same problem and symptoms. I created a new profile. Same problem and symptoms. I reset FF. Same problem and symptoms.

What other diagnostic or troubleshooting steps should I be taking.

Machine is an HP Envy 15, i7, 12GB, Win7 Pro SP1 64bit (OEM).

Recently updated to FF19 for Windows. Today FF started hanging within 10 seconds of starting. The menus worked, but that was about all. I could click the Window close control, but when the confirm close dialog would appear (if I managed to open a tab or two before FF hung) the dialog box would be blank. FF is the only app exhibiting this problem. It works fine in safe mode. I disabled all add-ons and plug-ins. Same problem. I uninstalled FF19 and then installed FF18.0.2. Same problem and symptoms. I created a new profile. Same problem and symptoms. I reset FF. Same problem and symptoms. What other diagnostic or troubleshooting steps should I be taking. Machine is an HP Envy 15, i7, 12GB, Win7 Pro SP1 64bit (OEM).

All Replies (4)

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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.

Try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

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Now I use FF23 and it hangs shortly after starting it - it freezes about 3 seconds after it opened, and freezes for about 5-6 seconds, then it comes back to life. I suppose it is a problem with the video driver, as FF has once changed my cursor to a hand-like one. I have disabled video acceleration but with no effect. I have made custom changes to my NVIDIA control panel graphics settings, and I suppose that is one of the problems. On my NVIDIA GPU EeePC there is no such problem.

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I restarted Windows in safe mode but no result. I have found what is causing the freezing though, it was the Lastpass add-on which was attempting to connect to the lastpass website every time FF starts. Here is the solution of the problem: http://www.imagebam.com/image/3c18fc271388433

But then, when I was uploading the image FF froze again, this time FF causing the video driver to fail (I have to say, that I enabled hardware acceleration again, after fixing the lastpass freeze): http://www.imagebam.com/image/9e5f52271389190

I forgot to mention - I use NVIDIA GTX560Ti, Intel Core i5 2500K, 16GB RAM and OCZ Vertex4 SSD with Windows 8 Pro x64 with all the latest drivers and firmwares installed.

Modified by user752960