Recent Firefox unstable

[jasimon9]

I have had such instability issues with Firefox lately that I have temporarily switched to Safari.

I started noticing this on 1.5, but has only gotten worse on 3.5, including 3.5.2. Here is a list of observations:

1. On my Mac, if Firefox is idle for a good time, say a number of hours, it tends to become very sluggish, sometimes even locking up.

2. I used to sleep my system overnight, and 90% of the mornings, Firefox would be locked up.

3. About 50% of the time after sleeping the system overnight, my whole system would be locked up. If not locked up, then the whole system would be very sluggish until I force quit Firefox.

4. I temporarily solved all of these "sleep-overnight" issues by making sure Firefox was shut down before sleeping the system. After doing this, the system just wakes up immediately and works well, like it did some time ago, before the Firefox issues.

5. My son using Vista is reporting the same set of things, in that Firefox locks up itself, and it locks up his whole system, requiring a system reboot. So similar, but worse (yeah, Windows, I know).

In any case, it seems there is a problem with Firefox. So I started using Safari in the meantime.

Anybody else seeing such?

 

[xUKHCx]

Perhaps check for updates to addons, disable all of them and enable them one by one to see if any is causing specific problems.

Have you tried using a clean profile?

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

This seems to be a standard trouble shooting Firefox step.

 

[angelwatt]

I've never had Firefox lock up in those circumstances. I think xUKHCx is on to the right track. Add-ons can cause issue if they haven't been developed well and some add-ons interfere with other ones. Creating a new profile as suggested would be a good thing to try. You can also try starting up in Safe Mode to see if the problem persists in that mode.

 

[jasimon9]

Perhaps check for updates to addons, disable all of them and enable them one by one to see if any is causing specific problems.

Have you tried using a clean profile?

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

This seems to be a standard trouble shooting Firefox step.

This is probably a good approach. My son and I do not use any addons in common other than Firebug.

 

[erikistired]

i've been really unimpressed with firefox 3.5 so far. it seems to bog down, and a few times a day it completely locks up. i don't use any addons, and i've completely removed it and installed it fresh, always end up with the same problem.

there's only a few things i like about it more than safari these days, so i just use safari.

 

[dubels]

I am having problems with Firefox too, it has become a resource hog when only playing a youtube video. I see the opps we messed up restore image at least once a day now. On my XP machine it does not happen only on my mac...

 

[jasimon9]

i've been really unimpressed with firefox 3.5 so far. it seems to bog down, and a few times a day it completely locks up. i don't use any addons, and i've completely removed it and installed it fresh, always end up with the same problem.

there's only a few things i like about it more than safari these days, so i just use safari.

Since I am a web developer, it is important for me to use all the main browsers when I am checking the rendering of our web site pages. So I routinely use IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, and Safari.

My browser of choice when not doing such testing was Firefox. Especially important is the availability of Firebug. The other browsers have some similar tools, but nothing at the richness of Firebug on Firefox.

However, I am finding that for routine browsing, I have tended to use Safari a lot more, mainly because of its speed.

My son likes Chrome for its speed. However, we don't support Chrome specifically on our web sites, so I see no need for it at present.

 

[jasimon9]

Firebox stability issues seem cured by Snow Leopard

Since upgrading to SL, all the problems with Firefox on the Mac seemingly have gone away. That is, the lockups and slow downs seem to be a thing of the past, and Firefox is once again 100% usable.

Nevertheless, I have continued with more use of Safari, because of its slight advantage in speed. Not sure if I will gradually go back to Firefox. I still use Firebox whenever I need Firebug, as the poor equivalents on the other browsers are only suitable when "really desperate."

I am thinking my son's issues with Firefox locking up his Vista box are simply due to the Vista box. I am not seeing Firefox issues on other XP systems.

The weirdest part of this is that SL also cured the Firefox instabilities that it had in my VMWare instance of Firefox. I am not sure why this makes any sense at all.

 

[RonZ]

Sl

Since upgrading to SL, all the problems with Firefox on the Mac seemingly have gone away.

Great. What's SL?

 

[HellDiverUK]

Snow Leopard

And, Holy thread revival Batman!

 

[chico253]

Firefox becoming unstable

yes, I too am having the same problem. I tried the user profile fix but I still continue to have the same problem. Ran fine for about 4-6 hours today then started getting sluggish. The ole beach ball starts spinning and it just sits. sometimes come back around, others just locks up and I have to force quite. Getting very frustrating but I love the features of firefox so much I deal with it.

Oh BTW... I am running Mac with Snow Leopard.

 

[jasimon9]

yes, I too am having the same problem. I tried the user profile fix but I still continue to have the same problem. Ran fine for about 4-6 hours today then started getting sluggish. The ole beach ball starts spinning and it just sits. sometimes come back around, others just locks up and I have to force quite. Getting very frustrating but I love the features of firefox so much I deal with it.

Oh BTW... I am running Mac with Snow Leopard.

Actually, my main browser for a while has been Chrome, for two reasons: (1) it was faster (this was before the latest FF, which is also very fast); (2) I like the Developer Tools even better than Firebug.

But then had a problem with Chrome not wanting to access the Print menu, plus FF came out with its newest, fastest version. So that's why I checked it again.

 

[jive turkey]

yes, I too am having the same problem. I tried the user profile fix but I still continue to have the same problem. Ran fine for about 4-6 hours today then started getting sluggish. The ole beach ball starts spinning and it just sits. sometimes come back around, others just locks up and I have to force quite. Getting very frustrating but I love the features of firefox so much I deal with it.

Oh BTW... I am running Mac with Snow Leopard.

If you are using it, try going into sync preferences in Firefox and uncheck the tab option. I am guessing that if you aren't using Mozilla sync the option will be greyed out so it might be moot. For me that fixed my Firefox issues.