Firefox ESR 52.5.3 slow opening homepage takes 20 seconds
I have a strange issue that is affecting some of the users I support in my office. We run Firefox ESR 52.5.3 on Win10 Education PC's and have noticed that when opening the browser, the homepage takes anywhere from 15-20 seconds to fully load. It will just say "Connecting" until the homepage finally loads. I have tested with different homepages and it does not make a difference, every one of them is slow to load taking about the exact same time. We don't have this problem in Chrome. Although homepages vary, most users use psu.edu as their main homepage.
To troubleshoot this I attempted to start the browser in safe mode, and that did in fact fix the issue, it loaded the homepage immediately. However, if I start Firefox normally and I manually disable all of my plugins/extensions and disable hardware acceleration, the slowness on loading the homepage problem persists. There must be something else safe mode does that is resolving this issue. I am also sure the issue is related to the users profile in Firefox, because refreshing the profile or deleting it and creating a new profile temporarily resolves the issue, but only for a few days before the homepage slowness comes back.
This has me absolutely baffled. Any help would really be appreciated!
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Since it affects some and not others that would be a network issue congestion is what it sounds like.
WestEnd said
Since it affects some and not others that would be a network issue congestion is what it sounds like.
The issue does only happen with some users, but they do not experience the issue in an alternate browser such as Chrome or Edge, so I don't think network has anything to do with it. The users who do have this problem in firefox experience the problem on any network while using firefox.
WAG here (wild-assed-guess)
Do those affected users have Pocket enabled, as with the browser that you posted here with has enabled?
Also, the Application Update Service Helper extension would be my 2nd WAG as a potential cause.
I disabled Pocket (which I didn't even notice was there) but the problem persists. The Application Update Service Helper is indeed running. Is there a recommended way to disable that?
Thanks for your help!
I have no idea about the Application Update Service Helper and if it can be turned off manually. I don't run the 52 ESR version and the two older versions I have installed are from before that was "included" in Firefox 50. I do have 57.0.4 installed, but it differs from the earlier versions by not having an "Enabled" column.
Quick search found this, from over a year ago - https://www.ghacks.net/2016/11/04/application-update-service-helper/ - but in 57.0.4 I don't have the "Enabled" column under "Firefox Features" in 57.0.4. But being that it doesn't appear in the Addons Manager > Extensions for me I don't think it is enabled.
And now I am wondering if my turning off updates altogether might have turned the AUS Helper off?? I always disable the updates when I install a new version or create a new Profile. I update on my own time table
In addition to the above (re : Application Update Service Helper) see :
http://techdows.com/2017/07/remove-all-firefox-system-add-ons.html