Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox freezes after VPN status change

  • 3 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by zeroknight

Parallax
Parallax
more options

Whenever I change my VPN (not Mozilla VPN) status, Firefox will refuse to connect for something like 30 seconds then times out, leaving me with a blank screen. I have wait until that interval has passed before I can retry, otherwise it will repeat the freeze. This happens whenever I turn my VPN on/off or switch to a different VPN server. It happens only with Firefox. Chrome and my email client have no problems whatsoever. I think it's some kind of DNS caching problem within Firefox as the problem doesn't happen if I visit a site that I hadn't visited very recently. There's immediate response if I do that. I have DNS over HTTPS and secure DNS turned off in the settings, so it can't be those.

Anyone else have this problem? I wish there was some way to clear Firefox's DNS cache other than having to go into about:networking

Whenever I change my VPN (not Mozilla VPN) status, Firefox will refuse to connect for something like 30 seconds then times out, leaving me with a blank screen. I have wait until that interval has passed before I can retry, otherwise it will repeat the freeze. This happens whenever I turn my VPN on/off or switch to a different VPN server. It happens only with Firefox. Chrome and my email client have no problems whatsoever. I think it's some kind of DNS caching problem within Firefox as the problem doesn't happen if I visit a site that I hadn't visited very recently. There's immediate response if I do that. I have DNS over HTTPS and secure DNS turned off in the settings, so it can't be those. Anyone else have this problem? I wish there was some way to clear Firefox's DNS cache other than having to go into about:networking

Modified by Parallax

All Replies (3)

zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

Press Ctrl+Shift+R to do a hard refresh without any cache.

namnoops
namnoops
more options

I have a similar issue with Firefox on MacOS. Every time I turn my external VPN status on or off, or switch my location my Firefox becomes completely useless - there's just no connection.

No amount of restarting Firefox, hard-refreshing pages, going offline and back online, clearing DNS cache, or using any of the proxy settings (None, Auto-detect, System) help. Sometimes it takes hours before Firefox is working again, sometimes a full system reset is required. Safari doesn't break a sweat with these VPN changes.

Any help appreciated.

zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

What version of Firefox?

Does it still happen with default settings in a new browser profile? An easy way to test a new profile is to install Developer Edition and see if it happens there or refresh your existing profile. Make sure you stay signed out of your sync account when testing.