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Firefox 7 intermittently stops loading pages, requires restart to correct. Why?.

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544 have this problem
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Last reply by John99 1 year ago

vohk

Posted
10/1/11 12:22 AM

During normal usage Firefox will suddenly stop loading all pages in all tabs/windows. Every currently loading page remains blank, with the usual 'Connecting to ____' message. Any new tabs or windows opened, or any new page requests, get stuck in the same loop. The program itself does not hang and, other than failing to load pages, performs normally. No change in behaviour with all add-ons disabled. Seems to happen with any website, but seems to happen more often on pages with any elements that take excessively long to load. Only current solution is to close program and restart.

This is not a router/connectivity issue, IE and other programs can connect fine while the issue is occurring. Full system virus scan came up empty (Sophos/Ad-Aware/WinDefender). I believe I first starting having the problem with FF6, feels like it has become more frequent with FF7.

Chosen solution

by archeocyathan

I may have found a solution to this problem here (well, at least Firefox has been working again for the last few hours, not sure if it will prove to be a long term solution or not).

As it says in the linked article, type about:config into the address bar, find network.http.max-connections and change its value from 256 to 48.

I have absolutely no idea why this works but it seems to. According to my resource monitor Firefox still seems to be using a ridiculous amount of memory and disk, and my cpu fan is still going crazy, but at least websites are loading again!

Does this fix the problem for anyone else?

Read this answer in context 41

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Having the same problem, here is some info for those of you capable of discerning the root cause:

1. Problem started after recent automatic Firefox update. The problem was not noticed at all prior to this.

2. CPU usage is normal until a search is performed. I currently have 6 tabs opened via bookmarks with CPU usage sitting at 0% for firefox.exe right now. 3. Once a search is performed, loading a page from the search may execute normally or it may not. This is where the problem occurs. If Firefox does not load the page in a normal fashion, CPU usage rises to 49% - 55%. After closing the offending tab and the search results page only reduces the CPU usage to 50% and never goes below this until the Firefox process is ended (see #6). Once Firefox enters this state, memory usage slowly climbs and continues to do so and periodically drops, but never below the level reported once the CPU usage goes to ~50%.

4. Using IE v8, I opened the same tabs and performed the same search and opened the same site that hung Firefox without problem, with CPU usage never reaching 50% at any point and returning to 0% - 5% after page loading.

5. I duplicated these results with antivirus (Spyware Doctor w/Antivirus v8) disabled. EXACTLY the same results experienced.

6. I have closed all Firefox tabs except this one and CPU usage is still at 50% - 52%. I closed the Firefox browser completely with task manager opened and watched. The Firefox process never ended and CPU usage remained at 50% until I manually ended the process. I then reopened Firefox (without rebooting or any other adjustments), it automatically came back to this page and total system CPU usage is at 1% - 3% with firefox.exe showing 0% CPU usage.

7. Prior to all this testing, I downloaded and reinstalled Firefox. I cleared my Firefox cache and my Windows temporary files. This made no difference in the results. Google was the search engine used in both the Firefox & IE tests. My system runs Win XP SP3, 2gb of RAM.

This appears to me to be a search related memory leak. I am more than willing to do some more testing if someone things they have a viable solution.

moderator fixed the line breaks

Go to answer 9

Answer 1 · 2011-10-21T13:45:12-07:00

John99

Top 10 Contributor
Moderator

422 solutions 5725 answers

Posted
10/21/11 1:45 PM

@ tristeconff7

A QUESTION: Has disabling an add-on the same effect as uninstalling it?

As far as I am aware that is the case. It is not necessarily the case with all plugins or all circumstances.

I've noticed that there are some addons and plugins that Firefox can't tell if they are Up To Date or Outdated and their status is "Research"

Plugins are only checked

if they are enabled when you do the check
they were obtained from mozilla, not third parties

Some plugins from third parties are commonly implicated in problems with Firefox.

Also note some security related programs may

tend to be active when installed but apparently disabled
interact adversely with other security related programs, if they are not part of an integrated suite from a single supplier.

You may do better by starting your own thread, by asking your own question.

Answer 2 · 2011-10-26T12:21:44-07:00

Kaye2392 0 solutions 1 answers

Posted
10/26/11 12:21 PM

Unbelievable difference. Quick and easy. I am so grateful.

Answer 3 · 2011-10-26T18:55:33-07:00

tristeconff7 0 solutions 5 answers

Posted
10/26/11 6:55 PM

For now I've switched to Chrome and I'm using FF7 to run my plugins for checking my email accounts in Yahoo and Gmail.

Hope to return to FF for all my needs, someday soon.

Thanks very much for the help.

Answer 4 · 2011-10-27T16:51:59-07:00

RField 0 solutions 1 answers

Posted
10/27/11 4:51 PM

I had hang / crash problems with both FFox and Chrome - while MSIE worked fine - which traced back to a conflict with a recent version of I/O Bit antivirus program. Deleted I/O Bit entirely / fixed for both browsers.

I went through browser uninstall/reinstalls, settings on browser user profile, add ons / flash, ISP proxy, graphics accelerator, prefetch, firewall, Windows file sharing / network, and ISP / router configuration - before pinning down to I/O Bit.

They probably got on to it and fixed their bug, but I'll never use it again.

Answer 5 · 2011-10-28T13:17:13-07:00

John99

Top 10 Contributor
Moderator

422 solutions 5725 answers

Posted
10/28/11 1:17 PM

RField,
others may be interested to know:

what your OS is
the full name and version of the software you feel is a problem

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Firefox 7 intermittently stops loading pages, requires restart to correct. Why?.

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