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Firefox lags and freezes several times in an hour - How to fix?

  • 4 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by ideato

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I've read up on the forums and nothing seems to be describing what I'm experiencing with Firefox.

The last 3-4 days I've had several instances where Firefox lags or completely freezes up when switching between tabs. It will still somewhat work but it's ridiculously slow.

For example, it WILL eventually go to that tab, but it will take a minute, and then nothing on the page will work for a minute, so on and so on. Sometimes a black screen will appear where the text should be. Sometimes it stays black, sometimes the page eventually loads. It was only one website so I thought maybe that page was having issues until today when it started happening on several other websites.

It's happening quite often and it's driving me crazy. I only had an error message once, early on when this started. Since then it just seems to lag and freeze, lag and freeze, over and over without giving me an error message until I get fed up and close out of it. Upon start up again, it works fine for a bit.

I don't use any toolbars. I updated Windows and my drivers. Computer has been restarted several times since this started.

I'd appreciate any suggestions!

I've read up on the forums and nothing seems to be describing what I'm experiencing with Firefox. The last 3-4 days I've had several instances where Firefox lags or completely freezes up when switching between tabs. It will still somewhat work but it's ridiculously slow. For example, it WILL eventually go to that tab, but it will take a minute, and then nothing on the page will work for a minute, so on and so on. Sometimes a black screen will appear where the text should be. Sometimes it stays black, sometimes the page eventually loads. It was only one website so I thought maybe that page was having issues until today when it started happening on several other websites. It's happening quite often and it's driving me crazy. I only had an error message once, early on when this started. Since then it just seems to lag and freeze, lag and freeze, over and over without giving me an error message until I get fed up and close out of it. Upon start up again, it works fine for a bit. I don't use any toolbars. I updated Windows and my drivers. Computer has been restarted several times since this started. I'd appreciate any suggestions!

All Replies (4)

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Update: I just tried my hardest to get it to give me a crash report and it wouldn't. I added a screenshot. (And also, I have run malware and virus scans)

I had to actually open a folder to take a screenshot of Firefox. It wasn't copying the page when I did it of just Firefox. I couldn't press any buttons, including refresh. At this point, nothing was loading, switching between tabs just brought up more blank screens, and eventually, it became ALL white. There were no icons on the top. I could minimize and close, but even though I let it "not respond" for a while, it wasn't crashing.

I also checked the usage during the phase when firefox turned completely white. It was using 62%+ CPU.

Modified by EMA1

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Hello EMA1, try to run firefox in safe mode, works ?

If firefox in safe mode has the same behavior then, try to boot your win 8 computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support and check firefox again. Any luck ?

thank you

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Ideato, Thanks, yes Firefox in safe mode, SEEMS to be working so far. So I should just turn my plug-ins on and off to test which is causing the issue? Is there anything aside from the plug-ins that would be causing it that I should check for?

Thanks!

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Turn off hardware acceleration and check it again in normal mode (in firefox safe mode hardware acceleration is disable), if that does not work then test for faulty extensions.

thank you