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Firefox slows down or stops loading pages when downloading files outside of firefox

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I have seen many fixes for slow firefox while downloading files WITHIN firefox, but I am having an issue where firefox either completely stops loading or slows down to a crawl when downloading any kind of file outside of firefox (Steam, installing games, ect). My connection does not change and there is no possible way that my bandwidth (to my knowledge) is being completely used.

Is there some setting that I am missing that I should uncheck somewhere? I can provide whatever information necessary.

I have seen many fixes for slow firefox while downloading files WITHIN firefox, but I am having an issue where firefox either completely stops loading or slows down to a crawl when downloading any kind of file outside of firefox (Steam, installing games, ect). My connection does not change and there is no possible way that my bandwidth (to my knowledge) is being completely used. Is there some setting that I am missing that I should uncheck somewhere? I can provide whatever information necessary.

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Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support to see if that has effect in case security software is causing problems.

Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode to see if that works.

  • Windows: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox
  • Mac: hold down the Options key while starting Firefox

Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.

Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

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