
Firefox takes up all the CPU and downloads like crazy.
Firefox is taking up a lot of CPU and apparently downloading something like crazy. I kill the process, restart, and it happens again.
I initially blamed my ISP but when I switched to Chrome the problems went completely away.
Chosen solution
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See:
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
All Replies (6)
By changing my home page from linkedin to google, I seem to have gotten in working enough to get the trouble shooting information:
Application Basics
Name Firefox
Version 11.0
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0
Profile Directory
Show in Finder
Enabled Plugins
about:plugins
Build Configuration
about:buildconfig
Crash Reports
about:crashes
Memory Use
about:memory
Extensions
Name
Version
Enabled
ID
Adblock Plus 2.0.3 true {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}
Add to Amazon Wish List Button 1.8 true amznUWL2@amazon.com
AddThis 3.5.7 true {3e0e7d2a-070f-4a47-b019-91fe5385ba79}
Firebug 1.9.1 true firebug@software.joehewitt.com
LinkedIn Companion for Firefox 3.5.1 true {e2337727-f9c9-411b-929e-287584341d1a}
Password Reuse Visualizer 0.12 true jid1-bOHVlh4oBvBc7A@jetpack
StumbleUpon 3.99 true {AE93811A-5C9A-4d34-8462-F7B864FC4696}
Xmarks 4.0.5 true foxmarks@kei.com
Modified Preferences
Name
Value
accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar 0
browser.history_expire_days.mirror 99999
browser.places.importBookmarksHTML false
browser.places.importDefaults false
browser.places.leftPaneFolderId -1
browser.places.migratePostDataAnnotations false
browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion 2
browser.places.updateRecentTagsUri false
browser.startup.homepage http://world.std.com/~mgw/
browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID 20120312181643
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone rv:11.0
browser.tabs.warnOnOpen false
extensions.lastAppVersion 11.0
font.size.variable.x-western 18
general.autoScroll false
network.cookie.prefsMigrated true
places.database.lastMaintenance 1333993096
places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages 53688
places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size 85899344
places.last_vacuum 1299439220
print.macosx.pagesetup-2 PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4wIiBlbmNvZGluZz0iVVRGLTgiPz4KPCFET0NUWVBFIHBsaXN0IFBVQkxJQyAiLS8vQXBwbGUvL0RURCBQTElTVCAxLjAvL0VO…
print.print_bgcolor false
print.print_bgimages false
print.print_command
print.print_downloadfonts true
print.print_evenpages true
print.print_in_color true
print.print_margin_bottom 0.5
print.print_margin_left 0.5
print.print_margin_right 0.5
print.print_margin_top 0.5
print.print_oddpages true
print.print_orientation 0
print.print_page_delay 50
print.print_pagedelay 500
print.print_paper_data 0
print.print_paper_height 11.00
print.print_paper_size 262144
print.print_paper_size_type 1
print.print_paper_size_unit 0
print.print_paper_width 8.50
print.print_printer
print.print_reversed false
print.print_scaling 1.00
print.print_shrink_to_fit true
print.print_to_file false
print.print_unwriteable_margin_bottom 57
print.print_unwriteable_margin_left 25
print.print_unwriteable_margin_right 25
print.print_unwriteable_margin_top 10
privacy.cpd.cache false
privacy.cpd.downloads false
privacy.cpd.formdata false
privacy.cpd.history false
privacy.cpd.sessions false
privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs true
privacy.sanitize.timeSpan 0
security.default_personal_cert Select Automatically
security.warn_viewing_mixed false
Graphics
Vendor ID 10de
Device ID 0407
WebGL Renderer NVIDIA Corporation -- NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT OpenGL Engine -- 2.1 NVIDIA-1.6.36
GPU Accelerated Windows 1/1 OpenGL
AzureBackend skia
But it still froze up, just took a moment longer. Opening Firefox in safe mode seems to prevent the problem for the moment, which suggests that the plugin checker is telling me something is good when it is not.
You could try to uninstall and reinstall Firefox, and see if that helps. Maybe it's trying to download an update?? I'm not sure. But try that and if it persists, let us know.
Thanks for the suggestion. I did that. It didn't help. I tried disabling all add-ons and it is still frozen up. Freezing up just took a little longer.
Would there be a way that I could turn on some kind of extra logging so that we could diagnose what it is doing? I would be happy to FTP or email the logs to somewhere useful if they are too big to post here.
Chosen Solution
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Basic Troubleshooting: Make a new profile":
There may be extensions and plugins installed by default in a new profile, so check that in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions & Plugins" in case there are still problems.
If that new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.
See:
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
Making a new profile seems to have solved the problem. Thanks much.