Hi there!

Sorry to hear you're running into issues using the latest version of Firefox. If you want to go back to using an older version, you can find the instructions for doing so here: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/install-older-version-of-firefox

Before that, you could also try using the Safe Mode and checking if the browser still behaves in a problematic way: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the suggestions. Shortcut for getting Safe Mode is helpful (press Shift when opening) as I can close it using Process Explorer when getting the command in FF is slow! Closing FF reduced 'Commit memory' from 18.2 GB to 6.6, Physical memory 7.1 to 4.3. Installed memory is 8 GB - not surprising it was struggling! Just getting started on assessment - will update after (a) testing Safe Mode and (b) trying old version again

What a relief!!!! Being able to click on something and it does something!! I have reinstalled V 56.0.02, and disabled updates, so I have a version of FF that is active, does not just sit there for hours doing nothing. Hopefully the developers will be able to work out what has gone wrong with what I assume was meant to be a Major update. What you could call a cock-up (to be polite)FF should be capable of working with multiple (1800) tabs without demure!

However, this can't be seen as a solution to the problem , as I am now unable to move on to a newer version of FireFox ever!

No, it will be force updated it on you.

unfortunately 56.0.2 is no longer safe to use for every day use do to secuity issues, but 52.5.0 ESR is. It will continue to get security updates until May 2018, and you can download and install it from this page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/ Note : Legacy Extensions will be deleted or removed in any version update after May 2018.

You should make a backup of your Profile before going back and just because: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

Most issues will boil down to how old your system is, have you been updating the drivers for everything on the Mother Board, Have you Updated your Video Card Drivers - this is where all the issues take place, old video cards and not able to update them or do not have the knowledge to find out or who ever made it stopped supporting it and the drivers are from 2012. Old and corrupted drivers create a wide range of issues.

If that's you then possible you have hit the end of the line. Just because it installed Win 10 does not mean it should be running win 10 on 8gig of ram.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

Thank you for the comments. It would seem that the way forward is to install 52.5.0 ESR and hope that by May next year the gurus will have worked out how to make FF load web pages as they are needed, rather than loading them all at once. I guess loading all at once gives a handy tag line / headline, claim to be faster starting /switching, etc. Good for novices. But for the experienced user, it's a real pain. I have many interests, so it's handy to keep salient web pages available in tabs, to switch to instantly using the awesome search bar. Even if the page I want takes a second to load, it's minutes quicker than having to find a New Tab, go through bookmarks, and again wait for it to load. It's months, even years since I made a bookmark in FF. So much easier to keep tabs available (NOT Open, but available). I am aware that some gurus want to dictate how we use the browser, as they think they know best, rather than accepting users have their own preferences. I recall many years ago having a similar problem with Avant Browser. After one update it became virtually unusable, as (again for speedy switching) their guru decided all tabs should be loaded at once. In those days, memory was limited, so even with maybe 30 tabs it just froze. We move on, and now we need the capability NOT to load all tabs at once, but just to load the active tabs, 1 per window (I have 4 windows with different themes and a total of around 1800 valued tabs), and then load tabs as selected/required. The default may be to load all tabs, for your headline claims, but there should be an option to load only active tabs. Please advise where I can put this view so that it will be seen (and hopefully acted upon) by developers.

What a week, trying to get a working version of Firefox since it updated itself to the discredited Quantum last Saturday!!! It took time looking at the Mozilla support (using M/S Edge, as FF was unusable) to get some leads. I even made the mistake of reloading Quantum, to no avail. I did get a working FF using V56.0.2, as reported above. Then I read pkshadow's comments (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/user/Pkshadow) and thought I should install V 52.5.0 ESR. I had a go at this, but despite trying different versions of sessionstore/recovery/Update rom the profile I could not get it to load properly. My tabs are grouped in 4 windows with different themes. 3 would load, but the big one, the one I need, wouldn't. I got a Process Paused message, (with Continue, Debug, Stop Process options). Whatever I selected, the window failed to fully load, visible tabs only showed New Tab, other icons missing or inactive, in contrast with other windows. I went back to the only working version, V56.0.2 but this updated to Quantum, having forgotten to disable updates. At this point, I Refreshed FF, creating a new profile. Although Quantum loaded OK, it soon ground to a halt, as before. Tried V 52.5.0 ESR again, but now it would not find the 'previous session'. So back to V56.0.2 as the most recent stable version of FF.

In the past, the session was stored in files such as sessionstore and recovery with the file extension js, but now the extension is .jsonlz4. Often both versions are present. I can't find any explanation FF help pages. Why the change? What is the difference? are the file types compatible? If compatible, why make the change? It only added to my workload.

At least FF only opens one process per window - Edge runs a 200MB process for each tab! I'll be closing that as soon as I get this current FF problem resolved!

Having failed with V57, I reverted to V56. However, when V59 became available, I thought I'd try it (actually V59.0.1). This time it seems to be under better control and doesn't run away with memory, at least not yet... One thing I have noticed is that it can be reluctant to load some web pages. Sometimes I have to click on the address bar and press Return. In some cases, this doesn't work, possibly because the web page is not available, but the page remains blank rather than posting a message. A bit surprising as one feature of Quantum is fast page loading (but maybe this feature helps prevent unnecessary loading of pages in the background)

henryfm said

One thing I have noticed is that it can be reluctant to load some web pages. Sometimes I have to click on the address bar and press Return. In some cases, this doesn't work, possibly because the web page is not available, but the page remains blank rather than posting a message.

When a page loads as blank or mostly blank, could you try jogging the zoom level: hold down the Ctrl key and tap + or - to enlarge or reduce by one step. If content fills in, you may be experiencing a new incompatibility issue in Firefox 59: if you have disabled ClearType font smoothing in Windows, Firefox sometimes renders fonts invisibly. As a temporary workaround, you can disable Firefox from using hardware acceleration. The following article points you to that setting; changes take effect the next time you exit out of Firefox and start it up again.

Firefox's performance settings

Thanks for the suggestion; I will try it.

Hi, ESR will discontinue June of this year so no point in going backwards anymore.

• https://www.howtogeek.com/333805/how-to-change-or-customize-firefoxs-new-tab-page/
• https://www.howtogeek.com/333110/how-to-customize-firefox-quantum-and-remove-the-white-space-around-the-title-bar/

fyi : Firefox can be customized 235 million ways.

USSER CHROME URL'S

• https://www.howtogeek.com/334716/how-to-customize-firefoxs-user-interface-with-userchrome.css/
• http://techdows.com/2017/09/classic-theme-restorer-userchrome-css-modify-firefox-57-photon-ui.html
• https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/issues/1
• https://www.accessfirefox.org/Theme-Font-Size-Changer.php
• https://www.userchrome.org/
• https://www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Themes.php
• https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-css.html
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css
• https://github.com/axydavid/FirefoxUI/blob/master/README.md
• https://github.com/wilfredwee/photon-australis
• https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/

Note not all code in one place.

Just make sure you maintain a properly working version of FF at ALL times ;-) You always need a prior version in case there is a glitch you didn't think about whilst developing!!!

Hi, just keep a copy of these :

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import-bookmarks-html-file
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

If have the room and the ram you can play with something interesting or have as a back up to Release version Firefox (this) you can install the Developers Edition https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ as it has a compatibility option at end of the install. Do not need to use the tools, It is in Beta all the time, version 60 at the moment, shares bookmarks.

The ESR is turning into Quantum for Enterprise https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/03/13/it-pros-and-cios-sign-up-to-try-firefox-quantum-for-enterprise/