Firefox 29 is slow to load and crashes frequently
After upgrading to Firefox 29, I have nothing but trouble. I already noticed that the past few versions were becoming more unstable than what I was used to with Firefox, but version 29 is horrible. After many hours of troubleshooting I am finding out that many others are reporting many problems with this version as well. I am a heavy user of Firefox and speed and stability along with ability to customize it matters a lot to me. Seems like Firefox 29 is taking some of that ability away from its users, and it is like a step backwards.
Here are some specifics. I am using Windows 7 32-bit (on a 64-bit machine). I have hundreds of tabs open with several tab groups. After upgrading to Firefox 29, Firefox started crashing quite frequently and it would take several minutes to load (roughly 5 minutes). When Firefox was loading it was using 100% CPU on one of the two cores. Version 28 would load in several seconds. I tried disabling all add-ons in Firefox 29 and all my plug-ins are set to "Ask to activate". This reduced the load of Firefox 29 to a littile bit over a minute, but CPU usage is still 100% on one of the cores and memory utilization is 2 to 3 times higher than of Firefox 28. Firefox 29 uses about 1.3 GB of memory, while Firefox 28 would start off with a much smaller foot print and only start using more memory after more tabs are "activated" - I use "don't load tabs until selected" setting. At times Firefox 29 would lose my tabs and would not recover everything, I had to go back several times and replace sessionstore.js with a manually backed up file, as Firefox's backup lost too many things.
How about if Mozilla reverts back to the old interface and focuses on fixing security issues, bugs, and improving performance and memory management? In my opinion that would be very valuable for Firefox users such as me. I want to thank Mozilla Firefox team for giving us an excellent browser, but my experience has degraded in latest few versions and I will be possibly looking for a replacement if Mozilla does not focus on the more important things - stability, performance, customizability.
What others are saying: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/04/28/firefox-29-one-new-interface-released-find-new/
Here is how to get the old functionality for users who do not have stability and performance issues: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/04/26/turn-new-firefox-29-old-firefox/
All Replies (8)
How about if Mozilla reverts back to the old interface and focuses on fixing security issues, bugs, and improving performance and memory management? In my opinion that would be very valuable for Firefox users such as me. I want to thank Mozilla Firefox team for giving us an excellent browser, but my experience has degraded in latest few versions and I will be possibly looking for a replacement if Mozilla does not focus on the more important things - stability, performance, customizability.
Please leave feedback for the Firefox developers at input.mozilla.org/feedback as the feedback said here won't be read by developers or engineers
As for your crashes, if you wish to get support, please follow my directions below.
Can you give me your crash reports?
- Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A Submitted Crash Reports list will appear, similar to the one shown below.
- Copy the 5 most recent Report IDs that start with bp- and paste them into your response here.
Thanks. This is coming off another computer and I did not have your reply in front of me, so I just tried to find them reports myself through the Help menu. At this time I will try to downgrade to Firefox 28 and hope to see that Mozilla will realize their mistake with Firefox 29. Some people report switching to PaleMoon browser (http://www.palemoon.org/), but I will hold off doing that for now, as I still have hope for Firefox. My stability has improved after I turned off all of my add-ons, but what's the point if I can no longer use my add-ons? One of the reasons people use Firefox is because of it's add-ons. It still takes over a minute (and 100% CPU usage on one core for that duration) to get to a point where the active tab starts responding. However, Firefox reports fabulous load time - it shows a few seconds load time on the chart.
Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days Report ID Submitted bp-c7afdc1b-7e65-4c27-9fed-5b8d32140510 23 hours ago bp-1340f0cd-bb64-4eb5-807a-286b72140510 24 hours ago bp-e080f884-90a0-40c2-9773-121a62140510 24 hours ago bp-369eadd6-0d89-4b59-86d3-0f17a2140510 1 day ago bp-95b46852-2ca7-487e-adad-553dc2140510 1 day ago bp-696e22a6-6420-498a-81c5-f35fa2140510 1 day ago bp-274ffc87-e01f-460e-afb7-48a0b2140509 1 day ago bp-bf6b3702-2ca8-4eba-ba64-0b6ae2140509 1 day ago
It would be nice to leave feedback if it didn't take two username requests and two password resets to do it. I have been in loops with Mozilla support on several occasions and am seriously considering switching browsers.
Besides, they know the problems, and like Yahoo Mail, seem to be more intent on chasing Google than understanding that their users are using FF because they don't like Chrome.
But here's a question: I do have a lot of bookmarks, most of which I never use. Could this be slowing down load time?
Guess what? My Firefox updated on its own from version 28 to 29.
Here is the story. I migrated my profile (which was too slow to load in Firefox 29) to another computer where I installed Firefox 28, so that it would not take 5 minutes to load all my tabs. I have been using Firefox 28 and it was working fine with the migrated profile.
I specifically set "Never check for updates" and unselected "Use a background service to install updates". Firefox crashed on me and I had to use Session Manager add-on to recover my lost tabs. Then one day when I launched Firefox, it decided to update on its own to version 29. It did not give me a choice to cancel the upgrade. It was checking for compatibility with add-ons and I hit cancel hoping that would abort the install of new version, but that just cancels add-on check. So now I am back to version 29.0.1.
Mozilla, please listen to your users. When users select "Never check for updates", that means we do not want to update Firefox for one reason or another. Maybe you should add an explicit option called "Do not upgrade" if that was not enough to prevent Firefox from upgrading. I specifically wanted to use Firefox 28 as Firefox 29 currently has too many issues and was mislabeled as just a Security Update instead of actually calling out that the whole UI was being replaced.
I am not sure if you have seen my reply, but looks like it got marked as a question to owner instead of reply back to you. Please see my answer to you in the "question to owner" by me.
Update: Never mind, this support forum with so many "Reply" buttons tricked me into thinking that it would reply directly to a specific person. I have also misread "Question Owner" as "Question to Owner". I do not see a way to delete replies.
Modified by firefox_fan2
firefox_fan2 I could've sworn someone had been helping you!
The majority of your crash reports seems to be because something used up all the available memory in Firefox then it crashed.
See also:
Mozilla, please listen to your users. When users select "Never check for updates", that means we do not want to update Firefox for one reason or another. Maybe you should add an explicit option called "Do not upgrade"
If Firefox keeps updating regardless of your settings, I find that weird. Although the "Do not automatically upgrade" seem like a good thing for Mozilla to try especially with a number of users going over to an alternative browser due to Firefox 29. The best place to request this feature would be to file a bug through Mozilla's bug tracking system, Bugzilla. You would have to create an account.
This is the way I disable updates for QA testing, etc.
You can set these prefs in about:config to disable automatic updating:
app.update.auto - false
app.update.enabled - false
app.update.silent - false
Another thing to do would be to go into about:config again and set these prefs to blank. Right click > Modify > delete existing > OK.
- app.update.url
- app.update.url.details
- app.update.url.manual
Firefox 29 currently has too many issues and was mislabeled as just a Security Update instead of actually calling out that the whole UI was being replaced.
Personally, I understand what you mean. Many users were surprised at the new UI in Firefox but those of us who were using the Nightly build of Firefox when Australis landed (such as myself) knew it was coming. Regular users didn't unfortunately. Although it somewhat implies a new UI in the release notes, I think that Mozilla could've done a better job at letting users know about the UI. I believe it was reported on numerous times in the press although normal users aren't likely to see that as they just believed it was a typical Firefox update (new versions come out every 6 weeks, gosh)
I am not sure if you have seen my reply, but looks like it got marked as a question to owner instead of reply back to you. Please see my answer to you in the "question to owner" by me.
I did see that but our forum doesn't work yet with the Reply button. Turns up blank :/
Imonteros Please create a new thread for your question as your problem isn't related to this thread. You can go to /questions/new to do that. Thanks!
Modified by Moses
Moses, my question DID relate to slower load times. I asked if bookmarks could be slowing it down. I'm not sure it's worth starting a new thread among the already exisitng millions for that.
Ever since version 29 (the big change), and even now with 31, my FF takes a full minute to load. And Forcast Fox doesn't work anymore.