Same problem. When a page starts to load, everything freezes for quite a few seconds, the spinner at the left of the tab stops spinning. Then when the page finally loads, it loads fairly quickly. So bad that I'm using Chrome for now. Hope there's a fix.

I turned off AVG safe search and it seems to have sped things up. It wasn't a problem with the earlier versions of Firefox, though.

Nope, I take it back. Still slow as molasses on the initial loading, so it wasn't AVG.

hello, try "speedyfox.exe" (it really works!) details on: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-firefox-runs-slow-browsers-run-fast/ also disable very old plug-ins like java 1.4 (2004 in my case) and so on...

Speedy Fox does not help this problem. I've installed Firefox 5.0 on all the computers on our network just to get constant complaints that it is extremely slow. And it is. Taking minutes to load a page that IE loads in seconds. Or never loading a page at all. IE, Chrome and even Safari work well, Firefox is shit.

Firefox has been declining for years. Once the best browser in the world, it is now floundering because of crappy programming and untested releases. I've HAD IT with this bullshit and this weekend will remove Firefox from ALL our business computers and install Chrome.

Way to fuck up a perfectly good browser guys.

I am having this EXACT same issue! I have a Mac. I was consistently having this problem w/o any luck trying to fix it. I disabled Add-Ons, cleared the history, cleared the cache, tried closing all but one tab. All of these failed to help the problem. I decided to use App Cleaner and completely removed Firefox and all associated files. Restarted the computer, and then downloaded Firefox from scratch. The new install acts the same. I have for the time being had to switch back to Safari.