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Firfox hangs loading background sites

  • 2 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by kobe

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When sites are loading slow in the background, as evidenced by watching them on the lower left corner, FF hangs. You are totally unable to do something until they load, and slow-loading sites can take five minutes. Yes, I've tried a fresh FF. This is a bug, period. I've loaded exactly the same site with Chrome and no problem. FF waits until a background site is loaded before unfreezing. This makes no sense. Every single time I load my signon site, wunderground.com also loads in the background for a weather program, and FF won't start until it's loaded. I'm about to move to Chrome. This has been happening for almost a year and they never fix it. It's a bug, period. I'm a webmaster and I don't need advice on using a fresh FF. Tried that. No luck. I'm not killing everything again for a boilerplate answer.

When sites are loading slow in the background, as evidenced by watching them on the lower left corner, FF hangs. You are totally unable to do something until they load, and slow-loading sites can take five minutes. Yes, I've tried a fresh FF. This is a bug, period. I've loaded exactly the same site with Chrome and no problem. FF waits until a background site is loaded before unfreezing. This makes no sense. Every single time I load my signon site, wunderground.com also loads in the background for a weather program, and FF won't start until it's loaded. I'm about to move to Chrome. This has been happening for almost a year and they never fix it. It's a bug, period. I'm a webmaster and I don't need advice on using a fresh FF. Tried that. No luck. I'm not killing everything again for a boilerplate answer.

All Replies (2)

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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).

To Enable SafeMode

  • You can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by holding the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • Or open the Help menu and click on the Restart with Add-ons Disabled... menu item while Firefox is running.

FirefoxSafeMode

Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode" Safe Mode Fx 15 - Win

If it works in Safe Mode and in normal mode with all extensions (Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) disabled then try to find which extension is causing it by enabling one extension at a time until the problem reappears.

Close and restart Firefox after each change via "Firefox > Exit" (Windows: Firefox/File > Exit; Mac: "Firefox > Quit Firefox"; Linux: "Firefox/File > Quit")

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Safe mode also disables hardware acceleration so if youve already counted out addons, you can try disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox.

Perform these steps:

  • Click the orange Firefox button at the top left, then select the "Options" button, or, if there is no Firefox button at the top, go to Tools > Options.
  • In the Firefox options window click the Advanced tab, then select "General".
  • In the settings list, you should find the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox. Uncheck this checkbox.
  • Now, restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.

Additionally, please check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in the following Knowledge base articles: