Hello Brian.

First of all, thank you for being so detailed in your post. That helps a lot understanding what you already did to try and solve the problem. However, the terminology you employ leads me to think you did not disable plugins.

You say you "tried disabling addons", "tried disabling extensions", which obliges me to clarify: add-ons are the collective whole of extensions, themes and plugins. You can access their lists (respectively) by going into Tools > Addons > Extensions, Tools > Addons > Themes and Tools > Addons > Plugins.

You also say you "tried creating new profile". I will remind you (or tell you) that plugins are not internal to the browser and are system wide, so they will be ported between profiles, and any disabled plugin from an old profile will be automatically enabled in new profiles. This also happens if you completely uninstall Firefox (which is completely unnecessary in all cases, without exception).

It's possible that you are having a problem with some Firefox add-on that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. So, I have to ask you, have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check, and that includes extensions, themes and plugins), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

Whenever you have a problem with Firefox, whatever it is, you should make sure it's not caused by one (or more than one) of your installed add-ons, be it an extension, a theme or a plugin. To do that easily and cleanly, run Firefox in safe mode (don't forget to select Disable all add-ons when you start safe mode). If the problem disappears, you know it's from an add-on. Disable them all in normal mode, and enable them one at a time until you find the source of the problem. See this article for information about troubleshooting extensions and themes and this one for plugins.

If you need support for one of your add-ons, you'll have to contact its author.

If the problem is not disappears when all add-ons are disabled, please tell me, so we can work from there. Please have no fear of following my instructions to the line, as all can be easily undone.

let me be more clear then.

i have no themes installed and see no way to disable the default theme. i disabled all extensions i disabled all plugins

but even if that wasnt clear, i would have throught the fact i tried safe mode to have covered that.

also, i did not just create a new profile. when that didnt work i completely deleted all profiles. and deleted all extensions.

let me be even more clear. with only 5 tabs open. with all extensions disabled. with all plugins disabled. and nothing but the default theme. with javascript as the only thing running. firefox hangs.

conversely, with everything under the moon turned on, except javascript, firefox works beautifully. asside from certain javascript heavy pages obviously not loading.

now i dont believe that 3.6.8 has a broken javascript engine. if it did, many more people would have this problem. also, going back to previous versions would have solved it, which they did not.

so somehow, javascript is not working correctly, on my system. i dont know how. i dont know why. and i dont know how to fix it.

i've searched the FF support forums, google, and have tried every solution anyone has suggested for FF hanging problems. nothing has worked.

"but even if that wasnt clear, i would have throught the fact i tried safe mode to have covered that." If you don't tick Disable all add-ons when you start safe mode, it doesn't amount to much, as you can probably understand.

Ok, now that I understand perfectly what you have already done, I believe this bug is being triggered by something external to Firefox (if a new profile, disabling all plugins and a reinstall didn't work). Can you please check other installed software in your computer for any incompatibility? Firewalls/antiviruses/security suites are usually capable of creating these problems, if they are badly configured. Also, scan for malware. To scan for malware, install, update and run these programs in this order. They are all free for personal use, but some have limited functionality in their "free mode", but the features you'll miss are not really needed to find and remove the problem you have. Remember that not all programs detect the same malware!

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - malwarebytes.org/mbam.php SuperAntispyware - superantispyware.com AdAware - lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware Spybot Search & Destroy - safer-networking.org/en/index.html Windows Defender - microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx Dr. Web Cureit - freedrweb.com/cureit

If everything fails, you can also try running Windows in safe mode (pressing F8 when booting up your system) and running Firefox then. If the problem goes away, you know it was caused by something that runs in normal mode but doesn't in Windows safe mode. This may be a lot of things, but at least you'll know it's something at that end.

ok, same person here, i just registered an account to make it easier for me.

first off, i scanned my pc using malwarebytes and adaware. both found zero of anything.

i'm in the process currently of using housecall by trend micro, so far it's also found nothing. superantispyware's website is down. and dr. web freaked out my graphics card, so i couldnt run it.

in any event, no viruses or malware found yet by any program.

last night before bed i rebooted windows into safe mode, with networking enabled. started up only firefox and nothing else. by morning FF was locked up again. i was forced to end task it.

so yes, this problem is still happening in safe mode.

Then it must some kind of intermittent bug in Firefox... Or something very weird. I'm not capable of providing additional support for this, I'm sorry. If you want to submit a bug report, do so at bugzilla. Prove as much technical detail as possible.

Be sure to read this, in any case.

Item 1 does not apply to the original poster, but may help others.

1. Do not run Flashblock and NoScript together. If the original poster hadn't disabled all extensions (and you didn't list specific extensions installed), I would have suggested disabling Flashblock if NoScript was also installed, since they do not work together. I was having dramatic increases, such as, Memory 250k+ and Virtual Memory 500k+ (both on Windows Task Manager (note Virtual is different using Process Manager) from my norm/averages of 115k and 120k, respectively, and then the browser would hang and not exit unless I manually ended the task in task manager. I disabled Flashblock, whose uses are covered with NoScript, and the lower levels returned. See also this site for extensions that are problematical, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions.

2. Use JavaRa and remove old java files. If you have never cleaned out old java files, I would suggest this. It could help, but it won't hurt. Java Ra http://raproducts.org/wordpress/software will do it. Download the program, unzip it, update Java manually through the website (don't use JavaRa), then run JavaRa, selecting "Remove Older Versions". It is a very small program that runs from the file itself and will not require installation or uninstall. At the end you can look at the log and be amazed at the number of redundant files. Then see if the hanging stops.

Many people believe that upon getting a java update all the old files are removed. They aren't. I have found with some computers that when the old files are removed everything java related speeds up. Some computers show no noticeable change even with somewhat similar amounts of files removed. I can only presume there is a conflict in some computers with the extra files.