Firefox freezes until mouse jiggled or keyboard pressed.
Firefox freezes until mouse is jiggled or a keyboard button is pressed continually. Stop jiggling the mouse or pressing < shift > < control > < alt > or other benign key (which I will refer to collectively as "jiggling), and a download or upload freezes. Otherwise the computer is fine. Firefox has been doing this for awhile, maybe since we switched to Firefox in 2014. This is my 80 year-old mom's computer and I live away, so the problem wasn't investigated until now. Yesterday and today I've spent 12 (or so) hours in a concerted effort to find the problem. Here's an abbreviate list of what I know.
Running www.speedtest.net the test will never begin or complete without jiggling continuously. Internet Explorer works absolutely fine on www.speedtest.net. With Windows focus in "Task Manager" window, Firefox doesn't freeze, but put the focus back in Firefox window and it freezes. I've uninstalled Firefox and deleted every Firefox file from the system, reinstalled FF 43.0 with typical installation, making no changes from the typical installation and the symptoms are unchanged. In the "Tools > Options" configuration, I've diddled with every control about which I could raise the slightest suspicion, with no significant change in the symptoms. This system has a 3 GHz P4, 2 GB RAM and 60 GB free disk space, and runs well. I'm testing with no other applications running - and remember, IE runs fine. Internet connection is Ethernet to cable modem and gets a solid 30 Mbps down and 6 Mbps upload speed with IE. I have about 2 days (before leaving town for many months) in which to resolve this or I believe I'll have to switch browsers, which I would like to avoid.
Chosen solution
Past threads similar to this say it is caused by malware, and the link Fred provided should help.
The facts that you don't see these symptoms in IE doesn't necessarily mean that the malware isn't interacting with IE; it could be that the malware just works a lot better with IE than with Firefox.
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Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?
You may have ad / mal-ware. Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.
Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. Each works differently. If one program misses something, another may pick it up.
I ran Firefox in safe mode and the symptoms were unchanged. Remember that IE works perfectly. Is there malware that is Firefox specific? If so, it seems it would be wise to enhance Firefox to be immune to such malware as are other browsers like IE. Thank you for your response.
Chosen Solution
Past threads similar to this say it is caused by malware, and the link Fred provided should help.
The facts that you don't see these symptoms in IE doesn't necessarily mean that the malware isn't interacting with IE; it could be that the malware just works a lot better with IE than with Firefox.
Followed the advice recommended by Fred and jscher, running all 5 anti-malware applications. Removed lots of stuff (resulting in at least one minor problem with a driver). Jiggling is no longer necessary to get Firefox to download or upload. Clearly malware is a problem on this system. The download speed is improved to 20 Mbps versus 30 Mbps using IE or, on another computer connected to the same router, FF which also gets 30. Looked at “Bleeping Computer” malware forum, but this seemed to be quite a circuitous route to solving the remaining FF performance issues. After spending 2-3 full days on this, I would have been better served by wiping the entire system and reinstalling from scratch, which is the only complete solution I know of. But hindsight is 20/20. The system is usable. When it becomes unusable, then I'll rebuild it from scratch. Thanks for your help.
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