Hello,

You appear to be on the rapid release (default) version.

You may want to look into Firefox ESR, as it is made for more enterprise scenarios. look at Choosing a Firefox update channel for more details. ESR gets security and stability updates, but lacks the feature updates.

If you need to disable updates outright, you can put this in a file called policies.json, however please see Install an older version of Firefox for reasons why this is not recommended.

{ "policies": { "DisableAppUpdate": true } }

So for clarification, there is no way to adjust the update schedule so it does not check for updates as frequently.

I have been using Firefox for over a decade now and I've never experienced this kind of problem before.

A) Does app.update.interval affect how frequently the browser checks for updates?

I have set it to 256000 as an experiement for now, and I am hoping this will work.

I am also experiencing another rather nasty bug with Firefox.

When Firefox has an update tantrum I sometimes close it in frustration and launch another browser so I can get on with my work. However Firefox never shuts down properly. And I end up in a vicous loop where this prompt keeps popping up and which ever button I click on it immeaditely pops back up a few seconds later.

app.update.interval seems to do what you think it does. It is measured in seconds. 86400 is one day.

You may have luck reinstalling Firefox to fix your bug. Instructions follow

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove your Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. This process does not remove your Firefox profile data (such as bookmarks and passwords), since that information is stored in a different location.

To do a clean reinstall of Firefox, please follow these steps: Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from mozilla.org (or choose the download for your operating system and language from this page) and save the setup file to your computer.
2. After the download finishes, close Firefox.
   • Windows: Click the Firefox menu , then click "Exit".
   • Mac: Click the Firefox menu at the top of the screen, then click "Quit Firefox".
   • Linux: Click the Firefox menu , then click "Quit".
3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
   • Windows: (Note: Check both folders.)
     • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
     • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
   • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
   • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
   1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
   2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.

WARNING: Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.

Please report back to say if this helped you!

Thank you.

The program is constantly looking for updates now. When I check in settings the little spinny wheel never stops spinning.

Every 30 minutes Firefox cannot access the internet for roughly 3-5 minutes. The problem has actually become worse since I tried to remedy the problem.

• I tried disabling updates using the .json file within the distribution folder = Issue continues :(
• I performed a clean install of Firefox, deleted all user profiles in the roaming and local sub folders. = Issue continues :(

The only other solution as far as I can tell is to stop using Firefox. And I really don't want to do that unless I am forced to.

Can someone help?

Hi, In addition to the other advice, Could you try the solutions in the following article and see if any of them help: Fix problems connecting to websites after updating Firefox

This was not helpful unfortunately but thanks.

I have been using the same security software on the system for several years without problems. The browser can connect to websites perfectly fine.

There is something preventing Firefox from being able to check and download any updates internally.

The problem just occured 10 minutes ago. Firefox decided to check for updates. No webpage would load while it was checking which took about 8 minutes. Meanwhile Chrome, Opera and all the other browsers on my system load a webpage perfectly fine.

I tried to disable updates but it did not help.

There must be a way to fix this. I don't understand how the problem still persists even after several clean installs.

I really really don't want to use Chrome as I despise it.

Hi, In addition to the other advice, Could you try the solutions in the following article and see if any of them help: Fix problems connecting to websites after updating Firefox

Although I'm not really sure if the issue is related to updates, json should disable it. Try to enter about:policies in the URL bar to check for active policies or error messages.

Thanks, I cannot see any error messages in the policies.

The JSON file is acknowledged by Firefox, I've included a screenshot below.

But the problem still continues. It seems to occur once an hour now. Firefox will not connect to anything for between 5-10 minutes. I've tried disabling security programs during this time and it has no effect. The PC is free from malware and viruses.

The reason I thought it was the updates is because each time the problem occured, I noticed Firefox was trying to update during that time.

If I think back these problems only started occuring after Firefox 95 was released.

A) Can I go back to an older version of Firefox? B) Why is Firefox doing this? C) Is there an update.log file that I can check to ascertain what is going wrong when Firefox is trying to update?

But the problem still continues. It seems to occur once an hour now. Firefox will not connect to anything for between 5-10 minutes. I've tried disabling security programs during this time and it has no effect. The PC is free from malware and viruses. The reason I thought it was the updates is because each time the problem occured, I noticed Firefox was trying to update during that time.

It looks like the policy is working, checking for updates is disabled.

Firefox checks once a day. You've been triggering the update process by hand over and over, but the reason of the issue must have been different.

reloadedx23 said

But the problem still continues. It seems to occur once an hour now. Firefox will not connect to anything for between 5-10 minutes. I've tried disabling security programs during this time and it has no effect. The PC is free from malware and viruses. The reason I thought it was the updates is because each time the problem occured, I noticed Firefox was trying to update during that time.

It looks like the policy is working, checking for updates is disabled.

Firefox checks once a day. You've triggered the update process by hand, but the reason of the issue must have been different.

Thanks. I've been trying a few experiments.

I noticed Firefox cannot connect to 127.0.0.1 / localhost during these outages. It's really strange.

I have no idea what is causing this now. I used to be a Mozilla fanboy but I am growing disenchanted with the products now after this experience.

It's almost as if Firefox forgets how to use TCP/IP during these outages. I am extremely puzzled.

Do the about: pages work (like about:config, about:about, about:mozilla, etc.)

The settings page is an about page, so that would be one as well (about:preferences)

Do the about: pages work (like about:config, about:about, about:mozilla, etc.) The settings page is an about page, so that would be one as well (about:preferences)

Yes they work perfectly fine.

I just installed the Extended Support Release version of Firefox. Wish me luck.

Firefox disables tcp/ip until all (some?) extensions are loaded and ready. This is a security feature, as some extensions (like ublock origin) need to be fully loaded to work, and if not, network requests that should be blocked or edited (like ads) will go through normally.

Best source I could find for some extensions doing this is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1503721

I am now using the Extended Support Release of Firefox and the problem is still occurring.

I installed two addons, noscript and Ublock.

Headed onto youtube...

Started to play a video and 5 minutes later it stopped playing.

Waited 3 minutes and the video magically started playing again.

Meanwhile Chrome and other browsers seem to be fine.

I've checked the Windows task scheduler, I've tried everything I can think of.

Have you tried running Windows in Safe Mode with Networking?

I think that would be the only way to check if this issue is being caused by your windows install.

Also, something from left field, have you tried using Firefox forks, like Pale Moon or GNU Icecat?

In addition to the advice given, If you start Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode, does the problem still occur? To start in Troubleshoot Mode, go to Help > Troubleshoot Mode.

If the problem does not occur in Troubleshoot Mode, then you can disable your extensions one-by-one until you find out which one is causing the problem. For more info, visit Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems.

The problem persisted but the outages were much lower with FireFox ESR.

The new problem I am having now is Firefox just won't start. It will not run in administrator mode either.

I have just tried to reinstall it, I deleted all the folders in program files. It will not execute.

There is nothing in the firefox logs folder to indicate what is going wrong.

I cannot even run it in troubleshooting mode because the program just will not execute. I have tried disabling my AV and security programs temporarily.

Never mind, I restarted in safe mode with networking support.

Launched Firefox and it run correctly. Restarted the computer and it finally loaded perfectly fine.

It is clear that my Windows installation has some how corrupted itself.

If your Windows seems corrupt, you may be of help to execute SFC /SCANNOW It is not as powerful as its DISM counterpart, but it can not really do damage.

When I did use Windows, some corruption often occurred.

The aforementioned DISM counterpart is DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth Please note that DISM is much more powerful than sfc, and therefore should not be used unless SFC can not deal with the issue.

If your Windows seems corrupt, you may be of help to execute SFC /SCANNOW It is not as powerful as its DISM counterpart, but it can not really do damage. When I did use Windows, some corruption often occurred. The aforementioned DISM counterpart is DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth Please note that DISM is much more powerful than sfc, and therefore should not be used unless SFC can not deal with the issue.

Thanks I will try SFC now... it got stuck the first time on 36% so I rebooted into safe mode to try it again.

Yesterday Firefox was exhibiting some extremely strange behavior. It would not retain tabs.