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Firefox slow and laggy for scrolling, typing and refreshing pages

  • 8 replies
  • 17 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by AlanMintaka

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When I type or scroll and also refresh pages or change tabs Firefox browser is lagging badly. It is very annoying. When I use Google shmoogle Chrome everything is fast. I prefer to use Firefox for safety so please help me solve this problem. Thanks in advance. John

When I type or scroll and also refresh pages or change tabs Firefox browser is lagging badly. It is very annoying. When I use Google shmoogle Chrome everything is fast. I prefer to use Firefox for safety so please help me solve this problem. Thanks in advance. John

All Replies (8)

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You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

  • Options/Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.

You can check if there is an update for your graphics display driver and check for hardware acceleration related issues.


When multi-process windows in Firefox is enabled then Firefox will use more memory and may be less responsive.

You can try this to see if it has effect:

  • set dom.ipc.processCount to 1 if it is currently set to a higher value (4)
  • disable multi-process windows in Firefox

You can disable multi-process windows in Firefox by setting these prefs to false on the about:config page.

  • browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false
  • browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

You can open the about:config page: via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

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Hi, Thanks for your reply and suggestions. I tried all of them and it did not help. Any other suggestions? What else can I try? John

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JohnCobb said

When I type or scroll and also refresh pages or change tabs Firefox browser is lagging badly. It is very annoying. When I use Google shmoogle Chrome everything is fast. I prefer to use Firefox for safety so please help me solve this problem. Thanks in advance. John

I still have this problem. Can somebody help??????? at all?????? If this problem is not going to be solved I will uninstall Mozilla Firefox and will not recommend it to anyone. All the suggestions that I have received I have tried and it did not help. Hardware and drivers??? It can not be because other browsers work fine only Firefox is slow. Help 111

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Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen or hold down the Shift key) to see if that has effect.

Do a clean reinstall of the current Firefox release and delete the Firefox program folder before installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.

If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows Registry and settings in security software.

  • do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall the current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including data in profiles created by other Firefox versions

Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.

  • (64 bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
  • (32 bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"

Your personal data like bookmarks is stored in the Firefox profile folder, so you won't lose personal data when you uninstall and reinstall or update Firefox, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.

If you keep having problems then you can create a new profile to test if your current profile is causing the problem.


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I just opened Firefox and a window opened with information that Firefox is Built for speed. Primed for performance. And more text how fast it is. In fact this is not true at all. This is total lie. My Firefox is slow and I still have the same problem.

Ok, thanks for last suggestion. I will try to uninstall it and reinstall.

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In your 8/3/17, 5:59 PM post you said, "Options/Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Browsing"

No such menu options in Firefox 56.0.2 x64. Only options in Tools | Options menu are General, Search, Privacy and Security, Firefox Account.

General submenu has no "hardware acceleration" setting. The "Find in Options" function on the page cannot find "Hardware Acceleration" anywhere in Options.

Turns out you have to disable the "Use recommended performance settings" option in order to see the "Hardware acceleration" setting. You omitted this info from your posted 8/3/17, 5:59 PM, along with suggesting an "Advanced" menu option that doesn't exist.

So I disabled "Use recommended performance settings" then disabled "use hardware acceleration." I then restarted Firefox. No Change. Still slow loading pages.

Modified by AlanMintaka

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This thread was started with a Firefox 54 version that still has the old design of the about:preferences pages with the setting in "Options/Preferences -> Advanced -> General".

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cor-el said

This thread was started with a Firefox 54 version that still has the old design of the about:preferences pages with the setting in "Options/Preferences -> Advanced -> General".

A version number isn't mentioned until my first post. In your post on 9/20/17, 5:26 PM, you do list other performance enhancing suggestions for x32 and x64 versions but still do not show a version number. How was I supposed to know that the menu options you described were specific to version 54?

In any case none of the performance tweaks work, and Firefox 56 .0.2 is still frustratingly slow at page loading compared to Chrome.