Firefox is constantly freezing and locking up my entire pc
I've been having a problem for the past few weeks with Firefox freezing up and causing my entire pc to also freeze up. For some reason, this only seems to happen on websites that I have to login to (ex: Yahoo, Facebook, etc.), shortly after I login. The ONLY way to get my computer to respond again is to manually power it off or put it to sleep (using the power button). It will not respond to any other commands. This issue started with version 35 but has continued on version 36.0.4. I have done a refresh of Firefox and full uninstall/reinstall. I also ran it in Safe Mode for a while with the same results. I even tried doing a system restore to try to see if it was a pc issue. This does not happen in any other browser and does not happen in Firefox on other pc's. My system info is listed below.
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601 Other OS Description Not Available OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Manufacturer SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. System Model 300E4A/300E5A/300E7A/3430EA/3530EA System Type x64-based PC Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B950 @ 2.10GHz, 2100 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s) BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies Ltd. 03QA, 12/14/2011 SMBIOS Version 2.6 Windows Directory C:\windows System Directory C:\windows\system32 Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1 Locale United States Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514" Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB Total Physical Memory 3.92 GB Available Physical Memory 2.72 GB Total Virtual Memory 7.83 GB Available Virtual Memory 5.99 GB Page File Space 3.92 GB Page File C:\pagefile.sys
All Replies (3)
Have you tested with the Flash player temporarily completely disabled?
Before going to sites that may use Flash, open the Add-ons page using either:
- Ctrl+Shift+a
- "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
In the left column, click Plugins. Then on the right side set Shockwave Flash to "Never Activate".
Any difference on the problem sites?
The reason I suggest this is that many users encounter problems with Flash on Windows 7 and Firefox stalling and displaying a slow script error. The most effective workaround for that issue is to disable the protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin.
That feature has security benefits, but seems to have compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it by creating or editing a settings file. The following pages/posts provide different approaches for that:
- Adobe support article under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?
- Batch file to automate the manual steps: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/982093#answer-518078 (alternate version of Carm's batch file with a few changes by me: https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=f7d304d92388737d&id=F7D304D9238...)
Flash needs to completely unload from memory (exiting and starting Firefox up again might help) before this takes effect.
Also, your More System Details shows two Flash plugins installed:
- Shockwave Flash 17.0 r0
- Shockwave Flash 11.8 r800
It would be best to remove the older one. To try to discover its location on disk, type or paste about:plugins in the address bar and press Enter. In the page that loads, do a find for 11.8, the old version number. This should lead to where it lurks.
If it is in a Firefox folder, it's almost certainly safe to delete. If it's somewhere else on the system, there probably is a corresponding registry entry created by either an old version of Flash, or some other program. It would be ideal to also remove that registry entry, but for immediate testing purposes, I think you can just delete the file.
Thanks for the reply. I tried all of your recommendations but the issue persists.