FireFox Woes and Fixes

[sandman67]

As readers of my rant thread and odd posts here know, I have been having major issues with Firefox for several months.

Like a dick I forgot myself and one day switched automatic updating back on. So my Firefox, which was the slim and sassy v9.01 went and updated itself to v12.

Thats when the troubles started. The program began eating up CPU runtime, to where it was taking up over 80% of the CPU capacity.

Then Adobe Flash started to run badly. So I went to the Adobe site and they reccd an update from Flash 10 to Flash 11. More problems.... now Flash stuttered, hung, or just plain old crashed two or three times per video I was trying to watch.

FireFox now ran like an arthritic slug on mogadon, hung regularly, and just chewed up the CPU runtime. That and now sometimes watching a flash vid on YouTube would start the hard disk spinning like crazy till I shut the plugin controller down, and sometimes even had to shut down FireFox as well to stop the spinning.

So...I toddled over to the Mozilla forum and posted some queries, and had a read of several threads by other users who were having the same issues with FF and Flash...and Avast. Seems that many a user were having the exact same issues.....and the common link was we all seemed to be using PCs or laptops that were a good few years old (6 in my case).

So...Admin reccd an update to FF v15. Guess what - no sodding difference at all, if anything slightly worse.

SO... finally I got so pissed off with the whole shebang I dropped from CNET an old version of my beloved FF v9.01, then spent three hours stripping Flash and FireFox, and all the crap each leave behind when you do a normal uninstall, off my system, including exporting all the hyperlinks and passwords so as not to loose them

Re-install FireFox v9, reinstall Flash v11. Switch off router, open FF and make sure the sodding autoupdater is disabled. Tidy up the leftovers of the installation files.

Result?

Works a treat again. No hangs, no crashes, no nonsense with the hard disk spinning out every 10 minutes.

So there you go. If you, like me, were conned by the technogeek swine at Mozilla, take heart. Just strip all their new stuff off, clean your system thoroughly, and go back to the version that worked....and make sure that autoupdates are disabled and stay that way.

[richard]

I'm on FF 17.0.1 and up to date with everything else (Adobe, Avast)

Did have lots of problems with FF in it's progression from 9 to 17 but now, touch wood, all is well

Perhaps some of the gurus on board will comment and advise

[Frank Hovis]

Me too 17.0.1 on Win 7 and no problems (no Avast though)

[J.J.B.]

Never had a problem with Firefox but feel your pain. I'm running a Mac and out of curiosity from your post when to check my version - it was 7.0! It then, of its own accord, decided to update me through versions 12.0 and then 17.0.1 in just a few minutes and that's what I'm running now. So, it will either run wonderfully or I'll be cursing trying to find out in the first place!

[margaretcarnes]

Coincidentally I'm having a few probs recently as well. I think I'm still running on Firefox 9... don't recall updating it. And I've no Avast or anything else because I'm using Linux. So in theory there shouldn't be any problems.
But the last week or so I'm having a lot of trouble logging in to Hotmail and some other stuff. I keep getting a message up that it can't find the server.
Wondering of course whether it's just a Hotmail problem - HHAD I can log in and run fine. But another forum I use is also proving difficult, which makes me think that Hotmail isn't the culprit - and maybe Firefox is.
It certainly isn't my ISP connectivity - there's full signal and no probs with some sites.

[Big Boy]

I had a substantial e-mail problem recently. When I eventually got to the bottom of it, something had changed my outgoing ports.

[margaretcarnes]

I had a substantial e-mail problem recently. When I eventually got to the bottom of it, something had changed my outgoing ports.

Sorry BB - you lost me! Outgoing ports are Liverpool and Hull.....

[Huahinian]

I had a substantial e-mail problem recently. When I eventually got to the bottom of it, something had changed my outgoing ports.

Sorry BB - you lost me! Outgoing ports are Liverpool and Hull.....[/quote

Or Plymouth in BB's case!

[usual suspect]

I keep getting a big pop-up from FF to upgrade to 17..but after reading various reports on Google I'm kinda dubious to do so..being a coward I'm sticking with the devil I know..think I'm on v12..?

[Big Boy]

The outgoing port number for my e-mail is 3535. Somehow, it changed to 25.

[sandman67]

I read into it a bit deeper and it seems the problems come from using FireFox when it conflicts with Java and Flash. The updated version of Avast that went out earlier this year also seems to have caused conflicts.

FireFox 12 seemed really vulnerable to these conflicts.

After v9 FireFox started to add all these RSS FeckBook and Twatter enhancements, and older systems like mine just cant cope with the added weight placed on the CPU and virtual memory....hence the hang freezes, maxed out CPU runtime, and hard disk spin drying a go go issues.

One thing I do love about FF and Mozilla is that they keep the older versions freely available for users to download and revert back to. Adobe and Oracle (Flash and Java) should fecking do the same....but dont.

One old issue I now get again is that FF9 as it is on my system hates the stupid www.weatherforecastmap.com widget on the HHAD page, so when I post a post the system hangs at the point the post function has to download the content for the widget. It posts the post, but I have to close the tab down to get FF to respond again. A minor pain.....

I hate all this FeckBook and Twatter widget hell crapola. Its a fecking plague on the net and users like me who just want the basic surfing old stylee.... Im a miserable neo-Luddite though who thinks mobiles are for calling people up and sending SMS texts and THAT is all. I wanna take pictures - I use a proper camera. I wanna listen to music I use a proper MP3 player.......I sneer at the iPhone crowd.

Retro-ware, Free-ware and dedicated devices..... this thinking will come back into vogue you mark my words. And if it doesnt... well I wont hear about it anyway as my phone only makes calls and sends texts.

[BaaBaa.]

Twitter is brilliant, it gives you live texts from whoever you want and also the opportunity to text them back.

Wether its breaking news from the BBC, an on the ground reporter, your favourite Film star, Comedian, or Footballer.

You follow who you want. It can be a newsfeed or social network. Its great.

[margaretcarnes]

Twitter is brilliant, it gives you live texts from whoever you want and also the opportunity to text them back.

Wether its breaking news from the BBC, an on the ground reporter, your favourite Film star, Comedian, or Footballer.

You follow who you want. It can be a newsfeed or social network. Its great.

But you can only follow existing Twits. So if Rod Stewart doesn't Tweet it's no good to me at all... overall I'm with SM on this one (we do sometimes agree!) my phone is for calls and texts. End of. I'm sick of people bumping into me because they are glued to their screens - and I'm damned if I'm getting out of their way either.
Facebook similar. Hands up I've just opened an E with a huge list of 'followers' all hanging on for me to speak pearls of wisdom to them. amazing how many friends I've got in Denmark!
I have to admit there ARE some genuine friends on there who I've lost touch with by e mail so will catch up with them, (and sorry Richard but I'll carry on emailing you yeah?) and there could be a few contacts I could use for networking purposes. Otherwise I really don't want to know what people have had for brekky.

[buksida]

I've been using Firefox for years and have only experienced problems in the following situations:

1) Running XP on a low memory system
XP with less than a gigabyte of RAM is cranky with certain releases of Firefox, something to do with memory leaks, - never had a glitch with Windows 7.

2) Running certain versions of Adobe Flash Player
Previous versions of Flash Player caused no end of problems and browser hangs, make sure you have the latest or, even better, totally disable it.
If you have this issue hit ctrl+alt+del > task manager > processes > and end process on the FlashPlayerPlugin, Firefox will magically spring back into life!

3) Using Antivirus browser plugins and website scanners
These will seriously hamper your connection and browser performance, disable them - its perfectly safe, good AV software will still detect and block website threats and malicious code.

4) Running third party toolbars
These are just crap-ware that attach themselves to your browser, usually without asking, when you download and install a piece of software.
You dont need them, disable or uninstall them and you'll get that browser performance back again.

The problem isnt really with Firefox, its the multitude of crap that attaches itself to it.

[PeteC]

If anyone is looking for a new add on theme for FF, "Walnut" is a real good one IMO. Pete