A bug was reported in Firefox 13 and fixed in Firefox 20 where the display of Firefox failed to repaint after resuming from sleep. There was a little confusion in the discussion about whether it was low-power sleep, hybrid sleep, or hibernate to disk, but the discussion concluded with reports that whatever people were using, the problem had gone away. (Bug #765215 "Firefox 13 hangs on resuming from sleep")

Presumably your issue is something different or something new that persists or now exists in Firefox 20-21. It could be a new or different bug.

When you say a lot of people are experiencing this, are there recent threads on this forum or is this in your organization or out on the web somewhere else? Anything you can link to for additional background?

Is there any association with particular content, especially sites that use plugins? Can you replicate the problem with nothing displayed during your session but the about:blank page? To do that, start up using:

Start menu > search box > firefox.exe "about:blank"

(Prior to Windows 7, I always used hibernate, I didn't trust sleep, but now I almost always use sleep because it's so much faster to resume and I bought a high capacity batter. I haven't any problems along these lines, so I don't think it's inherent in the combination of Firefox and Windows 7.)

For me, this problem began after I installed Windows important updates released 5/14/13. When I ran system restore to a date prior to installation of those updates, the problem was gone.

So I installed each update, one at a time, with a few days between each, and found the problem began again right after install of Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2798162).

I ran system restore to the save point prior to installation of KB2798162, and problem is gone.

Update KB2798162 "improves messaging of dialog boxes when you run executable files in Windows". I think I can live without this update for now, rather than deal with the unresponsive-firefox-after-sleep aggravation.

Firefox is again being unresponsive after sleep, so the brief respite from this problem must have been coincidence and not related to Windows update KB2798162 as I had thought. My apologies for the incorrect info.

Two bugs have been filed recently relating to sleep on Windows 7 (64-bit). Neither seems to have progressed toward a solution as of yet:

• 859038 – UI stops painting after resuming from sleep
• 873110 – When OS Windows 7 wakes up after sleep Firefox doesn't respond to actions

(It was also posted on a closed bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765215#c91.)

If forum members can contribute to the development, please feel free to pitch in. Otherwise, it's generally not helpful to add comments to bugs (unless there is a call for test cases), but you can register on the Bugzilla site and "vote" for them to be fixed. See:

• Bugzilla Etiquette
• Voting

I wasn't adding a comment to a bug, but was reporting a bug that from my perspective had persisted for some period of time in Firefox and had not been corrected. Perhaps you can "comment" on how as being the OP on this thread, I was "commenting" on a bug.

Unless by that you mean that you don't want to hear about bugs until you call for test cases. In which case, all I have to say is, wow, in nearly 30 years in IT software development, I have to admit, I've never heard of "don't report bugs unless we ask you for them" - amazing.

When I said that a lot of people had reported this, I was referring to posts I had seen across the Internet on various threads on many different forums.

Not an isolated incident by any means. All you have to do is a google search for FF unresponsive after sleep/unresponsive wake/unresponsive resume and find the same results I did. I shouldn't have to quote title and verse for you - the evidence is there should you choose to see it.......or not, your choice.

Sorry you didn't find my post particularly "helpful" or good etiquette for this forum - maybe that's the reason that the issue still persists - you're more worried about your etiquette than addressing a known issue.

Hi RadioActive1, I sincerely apologize for offending you. I wasn't criticizing you for starting this thread. I was (not very clearly) providing information from and about the Bugzilla system.

Yours was the first post I read on this problem, and even though you didn't want to hear from people who hadn't solved the problem, I went out on a limb and asked you some questions. You didn't come back to me with a response.

Meanwhile, another thread (browser freezes after resuming from sleep) came to my attention and we tried many different things to isolate or work around the problem before concluding that we couldn't solve it. I then looked up the pending bugs and posted those in all the related threads I've discovered.

I'm trying to work in good faith with you and other users who have this problem, learn as much as possible about it, and spread the knowledge across the various threads. Although I'm seemingly not affected by this problem, I'm also a Windows 7 x64 user so I'm in a good position to try things if people have suggestions, and to make suggestions based on my experience.

That's the best I can do. Hopefully that clarifies my last post.

OK, fair enough, apology accepted.

To be honest with you, I saw your original response and suggestion for (hopefully) isolating the issue, but just haven't had a chance to try your suggestion or for that matter even respond, until I saw your post this evening.

And, my point in the original post about not wanting to hear from people that hadn't solved the problem was really about not wanting a bunch of people to jump in saying "oh, me too, I'm having the same problem" - i.e. - I already had seen a number of posts saying that people had experienced the same, and unless they had a suggestion on what they did that helped, comments that have nothing to offer other than "me too" aren't particularly helpful, but unfortunately are far too common.

That said, back to the issue - the problem doesn't happen with any content in particular. It happens almost (but not every time) I wake my laptop from hibernation. In my case, normally when I'm done, I close the lid on my laptop. And, in most cases, I have multiple windows up at any given time. Gmail is always up in one window, and google is generally one of the other windows.

I wouldn't say that sites that use plugin's aren't the issue, but, I do know that the issue has occurred when the only windows that are running are Gmail and something like Google and say Wikipedia.

At one point I tried systematically turn off various plugins to see if at some point the problem ceased. That test turned up nothing of consequence.

I do wonder (maybe I said this in the OP) if it has something to do with javascript handling, i.e. when a script is running and the PC goes into hibernate mode, what happens to the script?? And more importantly what is supposed to happen to the script upon wake? (hope the answer isn't that it depends on the script).

I will definitely try your about:blank suggestion and report back, hopefully, without letting a bunch of time go by. Also want to test with minimal FF windows open - haven't experimented with that as well as with just Gmail by itself (hmmm).

One question - when you said you guys tried different things after seeing the other thread - were you able to replicate the problem or did it just not occur in your testing?

Appreciate your help.

In the other thread, we could not solve or find a workaround for the poster's problem.

There is a technical difference between Sleep and Hibernate. In Sleep, the contents of RAM are maintained by battery power (or for a desktop A/C power) and not written to disk. Not sure whether this has any importance for this problem.

OK, did some testing.

I'm not seeing a problem when I wake from sleep to a blank page.

Also, in that last post I mentioned hibernate; glad you pointed out the difference - I knew there was a difference, just not the specifics. In my case, I have my PC setup so that it goes to sleep when I close the lid. I don't use hibernate, so my issue is specific to sleep mode.

Plan to do some more testing to see if I can better pinpoint when the issue is occurring.

I hesitate to post in case this turns out to be just another coincidence . . . but I am finding if I minimize the FF windows before I close lid (like RadioActive, my lid closure activates sleep), then upon reopening, FF functions correctly.

If this behavior remains consistent, perhaps it can help to delineate the cause of the problem, or at least offer a temporary workaround.

• Did the behaviour remain consistent ?
• Does the problem reoccur again immediately if you change nothing else but have a maximised window ?

Note I posted in the other thread about the fact developers were asking for help in working out a regression window /questions/961898?page=2#answer-456379

@John - yes it has remained consistent, but I'll qualify that by saying that it doesn't happen every time, but better than 90% of the time. I've tried different tests, but haven't been able to isolate what might be unique about why or when it happens.

On the maximized window question - I always leave my browser maximized.

So here's a question - if a script was unresponsive, could this cause this behavior?

This may be entirely coincidental, &/or there may be more than one problem but there are suggestions turning off Flash protected mode helps.

• if you wish to try see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Flash#Flash_Player_11.3_Protected_Mode_-_Windows

Anyone routinely seeing this issue who does NOT have Flash Player installed ?

If this is mainly an issue that occurs when one of the pages has certain Flash content on it that may go part way to explaining

• the difficulty in reproducing (developers testing Firefox do not have plugins and extensions installed).
• the fact hat it is intermittent but affecting a large group of users
• if protected mode is involved we may expect this only to impact Windows users, and only those using Windows Vista or later

P.S. If FlashPlayer is involved it may help to know the Flash Player version used and whether you have tried with protected mode on and off.

Makes a lot of sense John, and the reason I ask (and have suspected) some sort of script error, is that from time to time I've seen unresponsive pages due to a script-related issue.

I'm definitely going to take a look at the Flash aspect and disable Flash protected mode to see if the problem disappears.

I'll report back what I find along with version information.

I also have the problem with hang afterWake up after sleep-mode. I tried the tips with minimize Firefox before Windows go to sleep mode and it works almost perfect. May be some few procent fail. I have Windows 7 32

Sadly I find that minimizing stopped working for me. I now have to quit and restart ff every time after sleep. Has a solution been found, perhaps on another thread?

Hi SingEvryDay,

I am not sure we even identified a reproducible problem here. I made a suggestion above that it could relate to use of Flash media, and that disabling Flash Player's protected mode may help.

• Does this normally happen every time you use sleep with Firefox open ?
• Does this only occur for you when one or more of the tabs/windows includes Flash content ?
• As a test: does disabling or uninstalling Flash Player solve the problem ?

Hi SingEvryDay, the wake after sleep problem is supposed to be fixed in Firefox 23. Have you tried it yet?

Yes, jscher2000 is correct, the issue has been addressed in the new 23 release of FF.

I've had no more issues with this bug; no need to minimize FF before sleep.

All is well in the world ;)

RadioActive1

It's still happened to me a couple of times with FF23, can't reproduce it though, seems to be random.