Hi FireFoxFan1, I suggest you to visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIz2MOF72Y This might helps you in fixing.

Edit by a moderator. TAKE CARE Please note you will lose your History if you try this method. Please also see my post #answer-855683 for further information.

Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode to see if that works.

• Windows: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox
• Mac: hold down the Options key while starting Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen or hold down the Shift key) to see if that has effect.

• http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/
• http://www.7tutorials.com/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

Hi again FireFoxFan1, I don't think you are answering all the questions we ask you when we try to help. I can understand you are getting frustrated with your Firefox problems, and are probably getting rather confused with the number of questions and threads you are participating in.

My First question is have you still set Firefox to clear history when it closes ? Does the problem go away if you do not do this ? (There presently known issues with this)

Secondly do some or all of these problems go away of you test using a new profile ? Initially this is only something needing to be done as a troubleshooting step. Using keyboard shortcut Winkey+R and typing or pasting

firefox.exe -P

followed by the pressing the Enter Key may open the profile manager. See

• Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles

May I suggest you try to keep to this one thread now while we try to help you, and only start additional questions if one of the regular contributors suggests that is a good idea. I note the-edmeister said

You have your support threads (at least 4 threads currently), please stick to your own threads unless you can help this user. Related or not to the topic being discussed here, jumping in here distracts from us helping the "Owner" of this thread. Please be more considerate to other users.

Your own existing questions are here

And I have previously commented

John99 [23rd Feb - said

Contributors Please note that Firefoxfan1 has multiple open current issues, so you may find answers or useful information in the other threads X-Links

• Firefox 44 not clearing history after closing of browser /questions/1111295/
• WordPress Blog Commenting Not Workign with Version 44 /questions/1110940
• Images not loading and general hangs in Version 44.0.2 /questions/1110747
• Slowness and Hangs on Firefox 44.0.2 /questions/1109780

• An older one Fx43: Files trying to open when I open Firefox /questions/1099792

Update

Latest post is

• Instant slowdown after updating to Firefox v. 45.0.2 /questions/1118000

cor-el said

Try to start Firefox in Safe Mode to see if that works.

• Windows: hold down the Shift key while starting Firefox
• Mac: hold down the Options key while starting Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen or hold down the Shift key) to see if that has effect.

• http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/
• http://www.7tutorials.com/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10

This did not work. Aside from the sometimes initial hang of many seconds, it seems that after my session has gone on for some time then I start getting random hangs every five seconds or so. Each hang happens for about two seconds.

Amit Kumar Jaiswal said

Hi FireFoxFan1, I suggest you to visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIz2MOF72Y This might helps you in fixing.

Is this something you have to do at the start of every new session of Firefox?

FireFoxFan1 said

Amit Kumar Jaiswal said

Hi FireFoxFan1, I suggest you to visit this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIz2MOF72Y This might helps you in fixing.

Is this something you have to do at the start of every new session of Firefox?

Please do not blindly follow such suggestions, they often do not work, have unintended consequences, or if they do work it is because of some other underlying problem.

Yes the solution in the video will work for some issues but note it is destroying your History when it forces Firefox to recreate the database. If that solution works you need to understand and address or circumvent whatever the underlying cause of the problem is,

FirefoxFan1 You never did say whether you had tried a new profile and whether that at least temporarily solves the issue. You also did not answer my question about whether you have Firefox set to clear History when it closes ?

If the video solution works, then testing with a new profile will work but not cause any damage or loss of History. Also note if you merely rename places.sqlite on each restart that will soon cause bloat of the profile. Especially if places.sqlite is itself oversize. Having said that renaming rather than deleting profile files is generally best practice, because it is normally safer and reversible.

P.S. I have added an escalate tag, let's see if professional help desk staff can spare the time to comment.

I tried the new profile few about half-and-hour and saw a bit of an improvement. At the same time, I'd have to use it for a lot longer to see if it really changed things, and I'm not going to do that now without my extensions and add-ons.

Speaking of which, the only add-ons and extensions I have regularly running are:

Adobe Acrobat

Classic Theme Restorer QuickJava Status-4-Evar

It's honestly the only thing I've been able to gather that may be wrong, though, I don't see much of a difference in safe mode. Still, if anyone has regularly used these and have found that they are incompatible with newer versions of Firefox in a way that brings on hangs and freezes, please let me know.

Anyone get around to this? I tried the Places Maintenance extension, but that doesn't seem to have done much of anything from what I could tell. Still getting short (yet consistent) hangs after running a session for an hour or more. What I end up having to do is close out of a session (and since I have everything deleted after I do, losing my log-ins and such, something I'm not interested in changing).

HelpDesk, does not always get round to all flagged questions and is short known to be short staffed staffed this week. I can comment further if you like.

If it's something beyond "restart in safe mode" or the other canned responses usually offered by the help. BTW, I think I can see a slight difference after the Places Maintenance extension install and run.

Canned response save time, but we try to use only where appropriate. In My Private Message replying to Your Private message I was quoting specific Firefox bugs that seemed likely to be relevant. I was trying to rule that in or out by asking for further information in this thread and for testing with a new profile.

Those bugs ^{(871908, 1248489, 1248837)} are not likely to be relevant if the Video link fix, or the new profile did not help. You say a new profile helped so maybe they are relevant.

Starting in safemode is useful troubleshooting step because we know what it changes and if it results in a cure a we can narrow it down. Same with the new Profile. It is not intended to be a fix but a troubleshooting step.

Note if you want to see your Firefox startup times and so compare whether there is an improvement use the Firefox Health Report (FHR)

• Firefox Health Report - understand your browser performance

I am still not clear about what you are setting Firefox to clear at closedown, and that is highly relevant to the bug that could be affecting you.

Also while Firefox is running (Please try both the working; and a brand new profile that you have not changed settings on, other than to disable plugins.) have a look in the Firefox profile. (Normally only work on profiles whilst Firefox is closed.) Look at the files listed. Make sure you have Windows displaying file extensions. You will see in each profile a places.slite do either profile also contain any places.sqlite.shm , places.sqlite.wal or places.sqlite.corrupt .

• What do you find ?

There are also advanced methods of looking at hangs, and recording details but it is normally much faster and easier to just use trouble shooting steps alone.

I am not sure I fully understand

What I end up having to do is close out of a session (and since I have everything deleted after I do, losing my log-ins and such, something I'm not interested in changing).

In that comment are you referring to the fact that you normally work by keeping large numbers of Tabs Open and logged and startup that way What do you mean by

I have everything deleted after I do

• Are you referring just to what happens when you test in a new profile ?

Or are you talking about your actions; or Firefox's actions; in deleting something ?

Note also the main question you asked here was about hangs at startup. How is that affected by using the new profile, with plugins disabled but all other settings unchanged does that hang at startup?

• Is FHR picking up these hangs or timings ?
• Roughly how long does it normally take to startup ?
• and what sort of time are you expecting ?

By the way it is possible to run two instance of Firefox at the same time but with different profiles. That would allow you to directly compare how your working profile compares with a new profile. (Assuming your machine has sufficient resources: spare Processing power and RAM to not slow down or hang the two processes even further). It would probably also make working with and troubleshooting Firefox more convenient

That is quite a bit of information you're asking me. I'll see what I can answer.

places.slite is the only file I have. As to my quote, I was talking about my privacy settings which I have set as "use custom settings for history." I have this setting so that it clears my history when firefox closes.

As for the startup, that's less of a concern for me now than the hang ups and freezes later in my firefox sessions. The initial startups are still averaging it looks around 7.5 seconds. Subsequent startups are fairly quick.

Hopefully, this helps get closer to the root of this.

The

"use custom settings for history." 
I have this setting so that it clears my history when firefox closes. 

Was exactly the sort of setting that was causing startup and closedown hangs in recent Firerfox versions.

But most of those issues have been resolved by now. In some cases this problem included issues with places.sqlite & in the most serious cases .shm .wal & .corrupt files would be created. You probably would also have experienced crashes or lockups not just 7.5 second delays in startup. So I guess your answers now rule that out, although your OP did say

 When I start the browser up, my whole screen hangs 
and freezes for a good 25 seconds. .... 
I couldn't even get into my task manager 
and the cursor was unmoveable. 

• So you no longer experience that ?

Your startup times do not seem particularly unusual.

• Or are you saying this is a change and improvement when in a new profile etc ?

What's the System Like memory usage & CPU for instance Firefox on Windows is still normally a 32 bit application. If Windows 7 is having to use a page file Firefox will probably slow to a crawl. If Firefox is having issues with memory allocation and deallocation that could give cyclical hangs.

• How does memory usage & pagefile usage look in Windows Task Manager ? (There are better methods but that's quick and simple)
  • Whats the total RAM on your computer ?
  • Usually what sort of number of Tabs do you have open: e.g. under 5, 10-20, 100-200 over 200
• What about CPU if one or more cores are plateauing above 75% you may well see slowdowns.
• In fact looking at your system details (top right edge) I guess you are using a 32bit computer. Is that correct ?

Your system may struggle trying to run two Firefox instances.

Before we try to consider unnecessarily complicated matters have you recently tried three very basic checks. I know you don't like the canned responses.

1. A clean Reinstall of Firefox. That involves deleting the program Files. Not the Profile files. It clears out any corruption there.
2. Running in Windows safemode. That's usually started by pressing the F8 key say twice a second while booting up. It rules out some Windows issues.
3. Malware scans with all the tools mentioned in Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. Adware is blatantly obvious, but some malware is much more stealthy

If HelpDesk staff do manage to step in next week, and may consider helping you record the hang details they will almost certainly expect you to have tried those basic checks first.

Lots of additional question, I see.

- Yes, the start of my first Firefox session after starting up my computer still has a heavy hang. All additional start-ups of the browser, however, are usually pretty bearable.

- I've been told before that my memory usage isn't unusual. I'd thought that maybe it was the problem, but folks told me it was typical. My system settings 4 GB (3.43 usable) installed.

- As to how many tabs I have open? Well, usually fewer than a handful but almost always under 10 at the maximum. I also try and avoid very graphic-heavy sites, so it's not like I'm having multiple pages open which includes lots of video players and such.

- Already done clean reinstalls, and malware scans (from a whole host of downloaded programs) are run religiously on my machine.

Guess I'll wait to see if help desk has anything for me. I've already had to close out of one session, tonight, because of a hang and freeze during a fairly routine session (i.e. just reading my local newspaper with four or five different articles in different tabs).

Not solutions mainly things you may like to play with.

Tabs Just a handful. That's clearly not part of the problem. I know some users regularly have hundreds of tabs open. Years ago on a low spec machine I tested with over 300 tabs and Firefox slowed down but did not crash.

Heavy startup hang May be worth still looking at your profilewith Firefox running at closedown and startup just to see if there are files .wal , .shm , .corrupt

Malware / anti malware Did you try the Windows Safemode ? If you do not have malware, could it be the opposite issue, antimalware, & security programs fighting with each other and Firefox.

Closeout Why not give Developer Edition (DE) a whirl. It is pretty stable. (Enough so for me to have it as the default browser on most machines) It has an optional & experimental feature that allows single tabs to crash and be restarted without closing any other browser tabs or windows. Unfortunately not yet fully ready, e.g. issues with many addons and with touchscreen etc, use. DE by default installs as a separate additional browser with its own profile. So it does not interfere with your working Firefox. It may be Synced with the ordinary Firefox if that is convenient.

• Some user friendly, but unnecessary, interactive background https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/47.0a2/whatsnew/
• Downloads https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/channel/#developer

Like to see how fast Firefox is at any given time ? The DE profiler, now called a performance tool is in Firefox Releases. So Fx44/45 have it. Intended to show how a site performs, not the browser. However it will graph whether the browser is achieving 60 frames per second or not. Enable you to take a snapshot over a few seconds, and then delve into the details at millisecond resolution. Your random hangs every five seconds or so should be easily seen on that.

• Frame Rate Graph
• Info including Video tutorial (Screenhots & features may not match Fx45 exactly) https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Tools/Performance

John99 said

Also while Firefox is running (Please try both the working; and a brand new profile that you have not changed settings on, other than to disable plugins.) have a look in the Firefox profile. (Normally only work on profiles whilst Firefox is closed.) Look at the files listed. Make sure you have Windows displaying file extensions. You will see in each profile a places.slite do either profile also contain any places.sqlite.shm , places.sqlite.wal or places.sqlite.corrupt .

• What do you find ?

NOW, I am seeing places.sqlite.shm , places.sqlite.wal in my profile folder. I just went and checked back as I'm still experiencing the intermittent hanging, and found these two places files. What should I do with them?

Hi again FireFoxFan1, In one respect that is good news, it helps us understand part of what is a problem on your Firefox.

It is not so much what you do with the files as the fact that their existence helps explain aspects of your problem confirming it as being related to these startup & closedown hangs that are under investigation. Firefox may clear the mess up itself on the next successful closedown and restart. After all you do not always see these files in the profile.

I do know Helpdesk staff did at least look at this thread and discussed it with engineers. Helpdesk then classified this as being related to one of the bugs I have already* mentioned.

• ^(#c4) Bug 1248837 - shutdownhang in nsThread::Shutdown() | Firefox crashes, sometimes the restart fails

Release & Testing I do not know if you realise this but in ordinary circumstances most Firefox changes are tested and rolled out in stages, that includes bugfixes. There is bit of a balancing act there. A lot of Releases actually have faults not discovered properly until they hit the millions of users that are using the standard Firefox Release. Some fixes my then need to be pushed out straight into the Release. That is sometimes referred to as a Chemspill fix. So for instance the standard Fx45 (8th March) was followed by fixes in Fx45.0.1 (16th March)

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/45.0.1/releasenotes/
• Releases also see & graphic

The juggling decision is whether to play safe and put out fixes as part of the ordinary testing and Release cycle or whether to rush them out sooner to help more people quickly but risk snowball effects with untested fixes causing further problems.

What can you do [A] A lot of the fixes to related bugs are already in Fx46 & Fx47. You could consider yourself trying a Pre-Release build of Firefox. Developer Edition (DE) is currently Fx47 and is now easy to install. By default it installs as an additional browser with its own profile.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/Firefox/Developer_Edition

[B] Trial not clearing history on close down. That is involved in some of the issues as the closedown sanitise happens. If for instance you manually clear history before close down it may avoid some issues. Or better still benefit from the saved History and instead use Private Browsing Windows for banking or whatever when you have a need to not save History. It may be worth ensuring Firefox is always given 10 minutes to closedown before the computer is shutdown, longer if Firefox activity is still seen to continue after the closedown starts. Make sure Firefox has a chance to close down properly, or time out and generate Crash reports.

Please say whether you try either of those and whether it makes any noticeable difference.

If you try DE I would recommend trying it with its own profile, and not complicating matters by trying to share a profile with your working Release. You could add bookmarks I suggest by backing up your working Release profile bookmarks and restoring those into DE You could even create an additional DE profile and have one with a full set of bookmarks and one without. Is it only the one with the bookmarks that has hangs ? We may if you wish even be able to get a developer to test out a copy of your personal places.sqlite Developers have sometimes done that where they think it helps with bug investigation.

I might try option B and see if that helps, though I've always loved the option of Firefox clearing information like history on closedown as it's very convenient. I was using Private Browsing for a few weeks before I figured out it was the central problem of certain things not loading in my browser (embedded twitter posts) which was unnacceptable to my browsing habits.

I don't think I'm going to mess with Developer Edition. That's way above my internet literacy level.

BTW, I do want to make sure I explain my problem correctly, because it sounds from your description of it, I may not have been clear. While very late into hour-long sessions I sometimes do get hangs that require me to closedown my browser manually in a way that's not good for it; my biggest problem are the intermittent hangs a bit earlier in the session that last for two, three or four seconds at a time. Those are the most annoying. I do expect from Firefox if I'm on too long for it to eventually freeze up from one big terminal hang, but what I'm finding really discombobulating are the annoying smaller hangs while trying to navigate the internet. Those hangs make me have to choose between closedown and starting a new session or trying to solider on to get what I have to do get done before closing down and starting a new session.

FireFoxFan1 said

... I was using Private Browsing for a few weeks before I figured out it was the central problem of certain things not loading in my browser (embedded twitter posts) which was unnacceptable to my browsing habits.

You can now open PB Windows so you can browse with some tabs saving history and some not saving History

I don't think I'm going to mess with Developer Edition. That's way above my internet literacy level.

No its not. If you can use Firefox, DE is no problem. You may wish to turn off its multi thread option.

• Even that is now a menu option like PB is on Release. You can use both options at once in different windows .

Otherwise it is near identical to Firefox Releases but with cosmetic changes and

• New features, mostly twelve weeks before Firefox Release gets them
• Extra tools or options for turning on tools

... get hangs that require me to closedown my browser manually in a way that's not good for it; my biggest problem are the intermittent hangs a bit earlier in the session that last for two, three or four seconds at a time.

That should not happen I do not see such problems.

.... I do expect from Firefox if I'm on too long for it to eventually freeze up from one big terminal hang,
.... annoying smaller hangs while trying to navigate the internet. ...

No it should not freeze if left on. I can browse for hours or leave it on over 24 hours without problems

Try DE with its new profile, with plugins disabled and confirm it works fine without any of those problems you have just listed.

Some combination of things has broken your Firefox. Its a darn site quicker troubleshooting by starting with a blank slate and adding things until something breaks than it is randomly removing bits and pieces hoping to get lucky.

One of the breakages may well be a regression in Firefox code. Even if that is the case it is a bug that only affects a small subset of Firefox users for some reason. Possibly only with certain settings, other software, hardware dependent; or a combination of such things.

Yes we can make educated guesses, and take shortcuts with removing things. That's the logic of the temporary safe mode or temporary new profile suggestions.