Anyone else finding Firefox becomming a bit flaky lately?

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TallyMan
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08 Nov 2009, 5:37 pm

Is it just me or is anyone else finding Firefox is becoming a bit unstable or flaky over the last couple of months? There seems to have been a rash or patches / updates lately but still some problems.

For example:
1. On some websites all the controls (scrollbar menu options) were locking up until each page had fully loaded. (This problem seems to have been fixed with the update the other day).

2. On closing Firefox it sometimes says it has crashed and wants to send a report to Mozilla. (Also seems to have been fixed in the last update)

3. When clicking images on some sites Firefox gets confused and sometimes opens them in another tab and sometimes in a new browser window all of its own.

4. I've just installed an additional spell checking dictionary and after it had installed it told me to restart Firefox. I did but the dictionary wasn't installed and it told me to restart Firefox. I repeated this several times and in the end had to reboot Vista before it installed correctly.

5. There are also random freezes now and then. Firefox eventually plays ball again but it can take a few seconds or longer for it to recover.

Anyone else had the above or similar problems? I always get the latest Firefox patches as soon as they are released - currently version 3.5.5


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southwestforests
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08 Nov 2009, 8:06 pm

Firefox been working fine on 2 different PCs for me and my wife.

Maybe the trouble is it's interaction with the Vista OS?
Vista's not the most well received thing on the planet.


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CloudWalker
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08 Nov 2009, 8:24 pm

Could it be the extensions that's causing this? Is firefox still that unstable when started in safe mode? (I mean ff safe mode to disable all extensions, not windows safe mode)

Quote:
Maybe the trouble is it's interaction with the Vista OS?
Vista's not the most well received thing on the planet.

Vista may not be the best thing on the planet, but ff is known to run much faster under Windows than Linux. Even ff under wine is faster than native Linux.



Metal_Man
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08 Nov 2009, 8:54 pm

I've seen it too. 3.5.5 just doesn't seem quite right.


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LadyMacbeth
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08 Nov 2009, 10:38 pm

Since the last update I've been having to restart it every day at least, due to it freezing up.


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DNForrest
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09 Nov 2009, 1:16 am

I'm running a Vista machine and I'm having zilch issues with Firefox.



TallyMan
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09 Nov 2009, 4:41 am

Thanks all. The only add-ons I'm using are those commonly installed:
FlashBlock
AdBlock Plus
NoScript
British English Dictionary
French Dictionary

The only plugin that is enabled is the Mozilla Default plug-in.

I've used Firefox in all its incarnations for several years now and never had any problems with it until recently. It has run fine on all XP computers and now this Vista computer since I bought it a year and half ago.

I wonder if it is anything to do with that Visual Studio / Windows Network Framework issue? I had the automatic Firefox patch removing that a few weeks ago. I can't help wondering if that forced add-on installed by Microsoft has upset something. After restarting Firefox after the last update (3.5.5) I noticed it putting its Add-ons back in place when it started up and briefly saw "Microsoft Visual Studio / Network Framework" flash past on screen too quickly to read properly. However, it is no longer showing on the list of add-ons. Maybe it is there in a sort of limbo - haunting Firefox.


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richie
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09 Nov 2009, 11:03 am

I have 20 add-ons and 10 plug-ins and the only time I had a problem is when I had the Skype
extensions installed. I am running FF 3.5.5 on Win XP.


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anna-banana
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09 Nov 2009, 1:33 pm

my FF has been freezing up and crashing ever since the 3.4 upgrade :(


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CloudWalker
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09 Nov 2009, 3:59 pm

So many people are having problems lately? :chin:

If you don't have anything important in your profile, you may try deleting it and start from fresh.



TallyMan
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09 Nov 2009, 5:31 pm

CloudWalker wrote:
So many people are having problems lately? :chin:

If you don't have anything important in your profile, you may try deleting it and start from fresh.


It certainly seems there are others with the same problems. I've been wondering whether to un-install it and re-install clean. Not sure what registry stuff it will leave behind that aught to be cleared too? Finding and deleting the application data folders won't be a problem. I just need to backup my bookmarks first. Hmmm.


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david_42
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09 Nov 2009, 5:37 pm

I've had a few problems since the 3.5.5 upgrade. The worst one crashes FF and logs me out of my computer. This is on CentOS Linux. Only one site has done that, and it did it consistently. I can live without it. I don't use my XP machine enough to discuss it.

I suspect it is Flash related. The last two problems I've had were. I wouldn't have Flash installed, except many sites don't work at all without it.



CloudWalker
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09 Nov 2009, 7:21 pm

Flash will definitely make any browser unstable. The same can be said to Java, .net, Windows Media Player, and many other plugins too. That's why the first thing I do in this situation is to test if the problems go away in safe mode. Since that doesn't avoid the problem and TallyMan already used FlashBlock + AdBlock Plus + NoScript, the culprit seems to go even deeper.