Mozilla Firefox becoming fat and slow??? Or is it just my PC??

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ZuniJayne

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Posts
334
Location
near Albuquerque, NM
Greetings, gang!

My PC is driving my even more certifiably insane.

I've used Mozilla Firefox and Zone Alarm security suite for several years successfully.  In the last month I have noticed that FF has nearly slowed to a dialup crawl.  I did download and install the current version of both FF and ZASS.

I have the basic Hughes satellite internet.  I learned that ZASS was causing severe slowdowns so I uninstalled it and tried the free firewall alone.  That still slowed stuff down.

Then I tried Windows firewall with free AVG and ZA ForceField.  I used Windows Defender and basic Firewall.  FF's speed increased but I got javascript errors with it.  I have run Registry First Aid, defragged my registry and hard drive but connex speed test sites still ask me if I am on dialup!

I am running Windows Home XP on a basic 5 year old Dell PC, 3/4 of my hard drive is free,  I have freeram xp pro, (can't remember my CP U speed) use Spybot, etc, clear my tempfiles, cache, etc.  The power supply was replaced about a year ago.

Actually, it is not just FF that is slow, although that is the most prominent symptom.  So far, all troubleshooting says my PC is fine.  Could the hard drive be going bad?

I have a couple of laptops for backup that friends have given me, but one (Avertec) seems to have a bad power supply and will not stay on.  The IBM one is protected by a password that the deceased owner cannot give me.  My original Toshiba laptop is well over 10 years old and only has a whopping 2 gig hard drive. It doesn't even have a NIC to transfer files with!

I realize this is a complicated situation.  I can't afford to pay some "guru" to fix it.  I am in the Palm Springs area.

TIA,
 
Be sure you're not running more than one AV program.  Try turning the AV off temporarily as some can be over zealous in scanning every byte that comes in our out of the computer, causing the slowdown symptoms you're describing.  Also, check the system status page on the HughesNet modem (192.168.0.1) for any problems.  Also the transmission info page for excessive transmission errors.  Those can cause slow operations and are usually a result of poor antenna pointing.
 
I doubt if FF is your problem, nor is your hard drive "going bad". What you are describing are the classic symptoms of what I think of as "dirty Windows". All the parts seem  ok, but it just runs slower and slower as time goes on. I don't think anybody has ever pinpointed the total set of things that erode performance like this, but over time the installation and removal of software, the various forms of registry updates and a variety of "run at start-up" functions create a lot of clutter that slows everything down. Painful as it is, a clean re-install of windows is the surest and in the long run the easiest way to get it back on track.

Just the fact that you have installed (and removed?) several different firewall packages is enough to severely churn up the internal mechanisms. These things operate at the critical junctions of the system and even a small inefficiency there can have dramatic results.
 
I have to agree with Jayne about Firefox. It is taking forever to load web pages, especially one with a lot of graphics. I still have Internet Explorer and am thinking about going back to it. I have been running side by side tests with Firefox and IE and am finding that IE loads about 3 to 4 times faster than Firefox, sometimes even much faster than that. Only problem with IE is that the multiple tab open function doesn't work as well as Firefox.
 
FYI, I am running Firefox, AVGfree and am not noticing any slowdown at all.

  I do use CCcleaner regularly to keep all unnecessary stuff out. The register (analyze and remove) would be full of crap now if I didn't use CCcleaner; works like a charm.

  I am no expert.

carson FL



 
 
I am running Windows Home XP on a basic 5 year old Dell PC, 3/4 of my hard drive is free,

Have you defragged to clean up your disk and get it reorganized?  That's helped me on occasion, and I do it twice.  The second time seems to improve things even further.

ArdraF
 
I have PC Pitstop which I run regularly plus I also have Diskeeper which constantly defrags. And still Firefox runs much, much slower that Firefox. I still think there is something in the newer versions of Firefox which has slowed it down. Those of you that are running Firefox and don't think it is slower, have you tried running IE as well and comparing times to load web pages?

I still agree with Jayne. How can we both be experiencing fat and slow Firefox? A coincidence?
 
And still Firefox runs much, much slower that Firefox.

Is that a typo Bruce? Were you intending to say:

And still Firefox runs much, much slower than IE

FWIW I run FF as my primary browser and don't see any "slow" issues.
 
Reinstall Windows? Why? How would that improve Firefox performance vs IE? If they both ran faster, IE would still outperform FF would it not?

Tom, have you done a side by side FF vs IE comparison test lately?

 
First off I was making a joke. There was a prior thread where I suggested someone reinstall Windows and I was eaten alive for making such a comment. Yes I have done a side by side of IE and FF lately and that is why I use Chrome. No one has come up with a very good solution to his problem and reinstalling Windows might fix the problem. It only takes a few hours to reinstall windows and that might be a lot faster way to solve the problem. The OP did not say FF runs slow and IE runs fine, he said this: "Actually, it is not just FF that is slow, although that is the most prominent symptom." It is a 5 year old system. I think it is time for a reinstall.
 
I was the one who first suggested a re-install and I agree with Seilerbird. It is not a FF vs IE issue - Jayne's entire system is bogged down. She stated that clearly.
 
I just went thru about the same problem, agree with the "Dirty Windows" theory. I found a lot of help on this Spyware Info website. I'd been using McAfee & Cclearner. Some how that junk got thru it. I had to use a combination of stuff to get it all. It seems every one of them gets something different.

BTW they are free.
 
From reading the description it is clear to me exactly what the problem is. But Jayne has failed to give us a progress report after her original post to tell us if any of the suggestions helped her at all. So I am not about to spend a half an hour typing to explain her problem to her and how to solve it. She doesn't sound very serious about fixing it if she doesn't reply to our suggestions.
 
seilerbird said:
Yes I have done a side by side of IE and FF lately and that is why I use Chrome.

Tom,
Please tell me a little more about Chrome. Does it have what I consider the most desirable feature of Firefox, tabbed browsing? Guess I could always give it a whirl and chuck it if I didn't like it.
 
BruceinFL said:
Tom,
Please tell me a little more about Chrome. Does it have what I consider the most desirable feature of Firefox, tabbed browsing? Guess I could always give it a whirl and chuck it if I didn't like it.

You can check out CNET review of Chrome HERE.  Personally I like iRider having tried FF and found it didn't fit my needs.
 
Yes it does have tabbed browsing and it is implieminted in a better way. It also has a built in spell checker on almost everything you type, such as this forum. I really like the Favorites Bar and it is a really fast browser with no bloat. It is simple to download it and give it a shot.
 
Greetings, gang!

Sorry it took me so long to respond to your great suggestions - been ill.

I've scandisked, defragged, free-RAMed, ccleaned, spyboted, fixed registries and optimized.  The Hughes signal doesn't seem to be a problem as the status page reports no errors and "normal" speeds.  I did get a program called "Process Explorer" that shows what is taking how much memory and cpu.  It's pretty cool.

It generally shows that svchost.exe is the biggest virtual hog at 209k, then FireFox at 159k, then MsMpEng at 113k, then Explorer.exe at 104k, then avgrsx.exe at 100k, then vsmon.exe at 99k.  These seem to be the top resource hogs.  When I had the Zone Alarm security suite on, its components were also way up there on the hog list.

I think that reinstalling Windows would probably be the way to go now, but I feel sure that FireFox is also a problem contributor, too.

I just found the XP reinstallation disk, so I guess I could do that.  However, I have no place off the PC to back up my current files.  When I reinstall XP, don't I have to reinstall every program I still want to use, and download all the service packs, etc that have come out since the original installation?  Does it really take "just a few hours"  as one person said?  Sorry, I envision a nightmare of frustration so I am reluctant to do it. :)

Or maybe I can get away for now with a better tabbed browser?????

Thanks again,

 
If your reinstallation disk is a restore disk, that will put the system back as it was when it left the factory.  All your programs and data will be gone.  If it's real XP disk, then you could do a repair install, but that won't remove the cruft from the registry and you would have to reapply all the service packs and hot fixes issued since that version.  Reinstalling programs can take a few hours if you only have a few applications, to days if you, like me, have scores of applications you use regularly.  These are reasons why it's rarely a good idea to reinstall the operating system.

Did you check the Transmission Info page on the HughesNet modem?  Seeing the Number of Failed Transmissions vs. the Number of Successful Transmissions might be informative relative to your slow browsing.

I very much doubt that Firefox is the cause of your problems unless you're running a misbehaving extension.  To test that, you can start Firefox in safe mode from the Start menu and see if your browsing speed improves.  If it does, then report back and we can proceed from there.  If not, and you have the latest version, 3.0.6, then it's not Firefox that's causing your problems.

As for those processes, svchost.exe is a necessary Windows program, explorer.exe IS Windows, no idea what MsMpEng is and avgrsx.exe is part of your AVG anti-virus program.  Firefox is, of course, Firefox.

There are no better tabbed browsers than Firefox :)
 
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