FireFox 8.0.1 consistently hangs in specific circumstances
Dear Sirs/Madams,
I have a lot of tabs open in use all the time, and normally things work relatively acceptable (not great since after a while FF always crashes). But recently, when I click on certain tabs, FF becomes immediately non-responsive with the typical system mention about that in the title of the window; CPU is fully busy with FF process.
This happens absolutely every time -- no matter if I restart FF, upgrade it from 8.0.0 to 8.0.1, restart my computer, whatever. The link in the tab which causes the hang is this (works perfectly normal in other browsers):
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/great-debate-postmortem-kindle-fire-vs-ipad/847#comments
However, this is not site specific problem, since there is at least one another site with the tab which causes same effect. All other links/tabs on that site and on this ZDNet site work normally in FF, nothing hangs.
The most interesting thing is that if I open this link anew, then new tab is created and no hang happens. But when I try to switch to the old tab with the same link, it always hangs.
I can not close that old tab to fix this problem, since once I click on it, FF does not even redraw the window to show that the chosen tab is now active. It immediately hangs.
Is there way to cure this tab without killing my whole session? It has a lot of tabs I need and opening them all anew is not realistic option.
Windows 7 hang error information (I tried translate it to English):
Signature of the problem:
Name of the event: AppHangB1 Application name: firefox.exe Application version: 8.0.1 Time stamp: 4eb4a985 Signature of the hang: 9fa1 Type of hang: 0 OS version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.4 Language code: 1049 Additional signature of the hang 1: 9fa16842bce256ccc5f3b7a0ab70b173 Additional signature of the hang 2: 247d Additional signature of the hang 3: 247d058fb4d4bfc8d1c54c566f26857c Additional signature of the hang 4: 9fa1 Additional signature of the hang 5: 9fa16842bce256ccc5f3b7a0ab70b173 Additional signature of the hang 6: 247d Additional signature of the hang 7: 247d058fb4d4bfc8d1c54c566f26857c
Not sure if this would be any helpful, but Process Monitor utility only returns "Profiling" activity of FF process when it is hang/fully busy state.
Modified by DERS
Chosen solution
I upgraded to FireFox 9.0beta and the problem with tabs which cause versions 8.0.0 and 8.0.1 to consistently hang is now gone.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (6)
The computer's central processing unit (CPU) as well as it's available random access memory (RAM) will determine the capabilities of any software running on a system. However, even a powerful CPU might not cope at certain times. This is usually an indication that one might need more RAM.
Though, there are a few things a user can do to keep his or her system fresh.
First of all, instead of loading all tabs at once when you open Firefox you can choose to load the tabs individually when you first click them during that session.
Second, temporary files created by the browser as well as temporary files stored on your computer may cause your computer to perform poorly. In Firefox, it is wise to Clear Recent History once in a while (Menu > Clear Recent History...). Of course, be careful so as you do not erase vital information such as password and sessions, allowing you to clear cache but keep the tabs open, etc.
Furthermore, cleaning up your computer (Mac, PC, Linux; they all need this at times) may improve your system capabilities over all.
Edit: You might also want to disable Hardware acceleration and see if the outcome is positive. Go to Menu bar > Tools > Options > Advanced
In Advanced, un-check the box saying "Use hardware acceleration when available".
Modified by krissie
Thanks for reply.
I alrady have "load on click" settings turned on -- this helps a lot due to quite a number of tabs.
Temporary files are no problem since I can open the mentioned link in a new tab. The cache is used in this new tab as well as in the old tab the same way -- if the problem was in the cash, then new tab would cause hang, too.
Edit: turning off hardware acceleration also not the problem because of the same reason -- this link works when it is in a new tab. Old tab causes the hang.
Modified by DERS
Similar problem - my details:
I got a new HP midrange desktop 5 days ago, core I7 2600 8GB Win7 SP1 64b, nvidia GT545 3GB. (My point of comparison is my old HP HDX18 laptop, core 2 duo T9400, 4GB, Vista SP2 64b, nvidia 9600M 512MB. It's been running Firefox exclusively sinc early 2009, with every upgrade allowed as soon as Norton add-ons are available - usually a week or 2 after FF release. 8.0.1 still works great on it.)
I installed FF and began researching problems with audio and usb 3.0 drivers. FF was running slow, almost dialup-slow, which raised concerns about the wifi card. So first I did router pings on both systems - both get about 10ms for a 10000b ping so I ruled out the network as a source of the problem. I got my audio and usb 3 working, and have been troubleshooting FF now for 3 days.
Symptoms are:
Very slow content load (right after loading same content quickly on the laptop).
Unresponsive FF window for 10+ seconds at a time - buttons/links/scroll don't work, can't move window, typed characters are ignored.
Ending the FF process takes 20-30 seconds, and sometimes never ends. When I delete the process tree, it sometimes still will not restart until I reboot, sometimes more than once. On the laptop, 5 seconds.
On the plus side, no outright crashes.
Here's what I've tried with zero success:
Safe mode.
Complete uninstall & (standard) reinstall.
Config tweaks to browser.sessionstore.interval, network.http.max-connections.
Delete prefs.js to reset defaults.
IE9 performance is OK. Installed Chrome but unfortunately I've developed an unaccountable hostility to apps that have no UI.
My ISP is 3Mb DSL with horrible latency, so the TryAgain addon is a must. Speed test results are identical to laptop.
Any thoughts? Thanks, CC
[Edit 17Dec2011]: Well I've given up on FF for now except when security is important - hopefully whatever is wrong with it will be fixed in the next release. I'm getting super response with IE9 and it also correctly renders pages every time - with FF I have always had to constantly refresh to get pages to display correctly.
Modified by c.s.c.
Chosen Solution
I upgraded to FireFox 9.0beta and the problem with tabs which cause versions 8.0.0 and 8.0.1 to consistently hang is now gone.
Modified by DERS
28Dec2011 - I just installed FF9 and if anything it's even more unresponsive than FF8. Looks like I'm going to be stuck using IE for at least another 6 weeks...
FWIW, FF12.0 seems to have finally fixed 90% of the problem for me, so I'm back on FF as default browser. Now if they would just make it more forgiving of high-latency connections and do something about the frequency of improper rendering...