When I type into any area of Firefox the letters appear with a delay of 10 seconds to 1 minute
I have tried completely removing Firefox, all its settings, profiles, uninstalling and clearing out everything, reinstalling Firefox 30 with no plugins, no bookmarks, nothing. I have tried running in Safe mode, but the problem persists, and it is specific to Firefox.
When I type anything into a box in Firefox - search box, url box, a box on a web site*, anywhere, unpredictably the letters just stop appearing on the screen, then appear one by one with a several second delay between each. It makes Firefox unusable and I have been forced back to using IE, which I loathe.
- it just happened while I was typing that. It suddenly stopped in the middle of the word 'Firefox'; then the remaining letters up to the asterisk appeared one by one, with a delay of between three and twenty seconds each - I counted. I have had to finish this by preparing it in Notepad and copying and pasting, because it keeps stopping.
My computer is up to date; all drivers are up to date; my virus checker (Zonealarm Extreme Security) is up to date. A virus scan finds no infection.
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601 System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard System Model HP Pavilion g6 Notebook PC System Type x64-based PC Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2330M CPU @ 2.20GHz, 2200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) BIOS Version/Date Insyde F.66, 24/01/2013 SMBIOS Version 2.7 Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514" Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB Total Physical Memory 3.95 GB Available Physical Memory 1.21 GB Total Virtual Memory 7.90 GB Available Virtual Memory 4.66 GB Page File Space 3.95 GB Page File C:\pagefile.sys
All Replies (3)
Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. Each works differently. If one program misses something, another may pick it up.
Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.
You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:
- Microsoft Safety Scanner
- MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
- Anti-Rootkit Utility - TDSSKiller
- AdwCleaner (for more info, see this alternate AdwCleaner download page)
- Hitman Pro
- ESET Online Scanner
Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.
Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.
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I have now run all of the above. They picked up a few items, but not any I could verify as active malware. And there is no change in the behaviour I described. I let each in turn deal with the items it found, by quarantining or deleting.
I was looking thru your list and had an idea. Some users have had problems and it turned out that their anti-virus was the cause. What I want you to do is disable ZoneAlarm, but only for a test run of Firefox. Also disable anything else you have. Some of these type programs have an option to disable but only for a limited time.