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My Firefox keeps freezing up, unfreezing after a minute or so. This has gotten very tedious and I've no idea what's causing it. I'm at wit's end here, I need a good browser for work and at home. (Note: IE isn't freezing up)

  • 17 cavab
  • 410 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by finitarry

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Firefox freezes up whether I've one tab open or five open. I've got plenty of RAM on this laptop, that's not the problem. Firefox worked perfectly until a month or so ago and I didn't do anything different then.

Firefox freezes up whether I've one tab open or five open. I've got plenty of RAM on this laptop, that's not the problem. Firefox worked perfectly until a month or so ago and I didn't do anything different then.

All Replies (17)

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I have this problem, mine freezes for about 2 minutes regularily. I have done a clean install and I still have this issue. Did a virus scan as well as as spyware scan also. Nothing. This does seem to be more of an issue the more tabs I have open. I can't remember getting this with just one tab open. More tabs, the more it freezes and/or crashes it seems.

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I'm sitting here nodding my head... I've run virus and spyware scans too, as well as reinstalled Foxfire three times to no avail. I don't have any add-ons except for AdBlock running. However, Foxfire freezes even with one tab open. I don't understand it. Foxfire, up until now, has been the best browser I've ever used. Now I'm not so sure.

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My laptop also froze frequently. Now it seems to work. It seems that the fingerprint reader add-on caused all this trouble (Digital Persona). I never installed this add-on, it was probably installed automatically with the fingerprint reader. Although it was shown deactivated, it caused all these troubles since I updated from firefox 3.x to 4/5. Even after fresh install of firefox this add-on was shown again (as deactivated) in firefox. There was no deinstallation button to remove it. I had to delete the add-on subdirectory in digital persona program folder. Maybe you have same problem as me.

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Firefox Hangs

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20hangs

Check and tell if its working.

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I tried what was listed in the link you gave mha007 and none of it applied to my browser, what few did had no effect on stopping the freezing.

I have this problem too and it seems it's for almost everything. From loading a different website, changing, tabs to opening my history. Firefox is the only browser I have problems with, and I know other people who are having problems as well. It seems since Firefox 4 came around there's been nothing but problems with it

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-> Tap ALT key or press F10 to show the Menu Bar

-> go to Help Menu -> select Restart with Add-ons Disabled

Firefox will close then it will open up with just basic Firefox. Now do this:

-> Update Firefox to the latest version by going to Help Menu -> About Firefox -> click Check for Updates -> if an updated version is found then download the latest version and install it. After that follow these steps:

-> Update ALL your Firefox Plug-ins https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/

-> go to View Menu -> Zoom -> click Reset -> Page Style -> select Basic Page Style

-> go to View Menu -> Toolbars -> unselect All Unwanted/Incompatible Toolbars

-> go to Tools Menu -> Clear Recent History -> Time range to clear: select "EVERYTHING" -> click Details (small arrow) button -> place Checkmarks on Cookies, Cache -> click Clear Now

-> go to Tools Menu -> Options -> General -> in Startup section click Reset to Default button

-> go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Content -> place Checkmarks on:

1) Block Pop-up windows 2) Load images automatically 3) Enable JavaScript

-> go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Privacy -> History section -> Firefox will: select "Remember History"

-> go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Security -> place Checkmarks on:

1) Warn me when sites try to install add-ons 2) Block reported attack sites 3) Block reported web forgeries 4) Remember Passwords for sites

-> go to Tools Menu -> Options -> Advanced -> Network -> Offline Storage (Cache): click Clear Now button

-> Click OK on Options window

-> click the Favicon on SearchBar -> click Manage Search Engines -> select all Unwanted Search Engines and click Remove -> click OK

-> go to Tools Menu -> Add-ons -> Extensions section -> REMOVE All Unwanted/Suspicious/Incompatible Extensions (Add-ons)

-> go to Tools Menu -> Add-ons -> Appearance section -> REMOVE All Unwanted/Suspicious/Incompatible Themes (Persona)

-> Restart Firefox

You can enable your Known & Trustworthy Add-ons and Themes later. Check and tell if its working.

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i have this problem to. it seems to be connected to if i click something to download or go to another page it freezes for about 2 min. if u click on the page it says firefox is not responding .

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@jimole2000 see the link in my First post + the following link:

Firefox is already running but is not responding

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox%20is%20already%20running%20but%20is%20not%20responding

Check and tell if its working.

Modified by Hasan

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i was having a HUGE problem with firefox 5.0 freezing up on windows 7. if i tried to download something with the firefox video downloader add-on, it would freeze until it had finished the download, sometimes 3 or 4 min later. what i did was, uninstalled firefox 5.0 and reinstalled 4.0.1. i think 5.0 may have been conflicting with my anti-virus (McAfee) it got a little better, but i was still having some freezing issues. then i found (on top left of browser in the Firefox tab) the PRIVATE BROWSING option. in private browsing, the computer doesn't save the history of your internet session. there are no cookies, history of sites and passwords (it can suck having to sign in every time) saved by the computer. after the first time i tried the private browsing option, my computer freezes are VERY rare.

it probably won't help everyone, i've tried so many suggestions from this page posted by others that didn't help at all for my problem, that i thought when i found something that did work for me, i should share it.

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I have been having this problem. I thought it was my computer and was ready to reload Windows 7. But I noticed I didn't have the problem of the web browser freezing with IE or Google Chrome. Chrome smokes! I'm sticking with it until I hear FF is fixed. . .

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I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM AND I HAVE THE MOST RECENT FIREFOX AND I AM ABOUT READY TO GET RID OF FIREFOX AND NEVER USE IT. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX THIS AND I DO A LOT OF WORK ONLINE SO IF I DO NOT HAVE A RELIABLE SOURCE IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE.

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@jlesko - Will you tell what are the problems you are facing ??

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This issue is why I installed and am using chrome as my default browser :(

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I came here after Firefox all but died on me: waiting a minute or more to open a simple page, and unfortunately none of the above suggestions did anything. I completely wiped out a previous installation, only to find out that the fresh new installation suffered even more freezes.

I finally did a mallware scan, and discovered that msseedir.dll is the culprit in this case.

Please do a search on your machine (I used Malwarebytes anti-malware), and maybe you will find the same dll responsible for the freezes.

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You could try decreasing the max connections setting and see if that helps.

You could also try disabling hardware acceleration. Preferences/Options > Advanced > General > uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available".