Firefox periodically stops loading web sites?


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Ok, so this has been going on for a while now and I just can't explain it.

It's like firefox has hanged, but the browser itself is responding fine. Just out of the blue, sites and such will stop loading. I'll click a link, a new tab will open and...nothing. It just says "Loading..." and will stay like that for several minutes.

During this time, nothing else will load. I can still flick back and forth through tabs, scroll through previously loaded sites, etc. but new clicks wont go anywhere (even things like quickedit on forums will stay "loading"), then suddenly they'll all load at once.

Has anyone experienced this?

I'm not sure how long this has been going on for, either, as I was on a really poor connection for a while and may have put it down to that, but now I'm sure it's Firefox as when it happens, I can open IE and sites will load just fine.

I can't reproduce it, either, it seems entirely random and sometimes it doesn't happen for days, then it'll constantly happen. I've noticed the exact same behaviour with the beta of FF3, except it's even WORSE on that - and that's being used on an entirely different system.

I can't narrow it down to any extensions, either. I've tried my best but it's so hard to reproduce it, I'm not sure where the problem lies at all.

Anyone got any ideas?

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I had this problem recently, and put it down to a plugin or something.

What I did was uninstall Firefox (if you have multiple versions installed take them all off), tick to remove plugins and settings etc (might wanna back up your bookmarks), and let that do its thing.

Then (and this is the part that made the difference, uninstalling and reinstalling didn't work), go to your App Data folder - On Vista, Users\Your User\AppData, and on XP Your User\Application Data (I believe) and go through all 3 folders removing anything firefox related, usually under either Mozilla or Firefox directories.

Then reinstall firefox, and if it works test how it runs with each plugin you install from that point individually, and see if you can find the culprit.

Hope that helps :)

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I think it's something with DNS... it's beta, so I'm not in panic :D

But yeah, it happens to me, also on Vista with no extensions installed... and only at my home, not at college

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since ur using a beta product those issues will happen,if you use an official app those gltches wont be there.

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This happens to me with Firefox 2 as well, though, not JUST FF3. It's not a DNS thing as IE would also get affected by it, plus I've switched DNS's a few times (My ISP's, some root DNS and OpenDNS) so it can't be that.

It COULD be a plugin, I suppose, but I don't really want to wipe my profile just to find it...

Anyway, I used this extension to list all my installed plugins/extensions. I have so many extensions that I was sure one of them was the culprit...

Last updated: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:04:44 GMT

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

Extensions (enabled: 28, disabled: 5):

* Adblock 0.5.3.043

* Add N Edit Cookies 0.2.1.2

* Always Remember Password 0.6

* BBCode 0.4.1.3

* British English Dictionary 1.19

* BugMeNot 1.3

* CustomizeGoogle 0.71 [disabled]

* Deepest Sender 0.8.0

* Download Statusbar 0.9.6.1

* DownThemAll! 1.0

* Fasterfox 2.0.0

* Favicon Picker 2 0.3.4.3

* FAYT 2.0.1

* Firefox Showcase 0.9.4.6 [disabled]

* FireFTP 0.97.1

* Fission 0.9.5

* FormFox 1.6.1

* FoxyTunes 2.9.5.31

* Gmail Manager 0.5.4

* Greasemonkey 0.7.20080121.0

* IE Tab 1.3.3.20070528

* Image Zoom 0.3.1

* InfoLister 0.9f.2

* InFormEnter 0.5.5 [disabled]

* Live HTTP Headers 0.13.1

* MinimizeToTray 0.0.1.2006102615+ [disabled]

* NoScript 1.5.2

* refspoof 0.9.1

* SmoothWheel 0.44.10.20071026

* Tab Sidebar 1.1.6.1

* Talkback 2.0.0.12 [disabled]

* Torbutton 1.0.4.01

* User Agent Switcher 0.6.11

Themes (2):

* Cylence Theme 1.5

* Firefox (default) 2.0 [selected]

Plugins (7):

* 2007 Microsoft Office system

* IE Tab Plug-in

* Mozilla Default Plug-in

* QuickTime Plug-in 7.4.1

* Shockwave Flash

* Silverlight Plug-In

* VLC Multimedia Plugin

EDIT: Anyone know how to disable plugins easily? I think it might be the VLC plugin, but it's just a hunch.

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exactly the same here. i have firefox on 3 computer and it's only happening on my vista machine.

Same problem here only in OSX. Can say about Vista as I would never install Firefox in Vista. Only use it in OSX because IE7 is not an option.

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I have had the same problem here on Ubuntu as well. REMOVE DownThemAll 1.0 since it is a bug causing it to do such in the about:config.

Reset the values:

network.http.max-connections

network.http.max-connections-per-server

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

If this doesn't help, create a new profile from scratch and do not install DTA until they fix that issue. Sadly I can't find the bug page.

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Yeah I've been using FF3 at work all day (With DTA removed - first thing I did this morning) and not once did it exhibit this behaviour. I'm pretty sure that was the cause all along. Shame, it's such a useful extension. Oh well.

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Just give it some time. In fact, go onto one of the forums on neowin and start opening lots of threads in new tabs (middlemouse them), I've found that seems to be the "best" way of setting it off although it's completely random still and doesn't always work. I mean I had DTA installed for a while now before I really noticed it.

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^ That could be the reason why i not seing it then because i hardly ever use tabs only if im multi-browsing on the web which is rare, mostly i only browse the web with 1 tab.

But im guessing i can see why this bug has occured because DTA is built to pickup images etc with dta one click.

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I don't think that's actually the problem, it's not like it slows down the loading of the site or whatever, it just completely stops, even like when you open a link in a new tab, it's froze before it's even connected to the site. It's pretty bad.

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May I ask if you could "browse" on myspace. Regardless of one tab, that is a place where it will sit not loading pictures. Try some other sites with a lot of graphics and embedded objects.

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Just a thought, this sounds more like a router issue to me - are you all using routers and/or wireless networks?

This used to happen to me when I had a wireless network, however i went back to the (much more reliable) LAN connection and it hasn't happened since.

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Just a thought, this sounds more like a router issue to me - are you all using routers and/or wireless networks?

This used to happen to me when I had a wireless network, however i went back to the (much more reliable) LAN connection and it hasn't happened since.

Well we've already found out that the problem was DTA, but for your own information I was on a hardwired LAN the whole time (wouldn't dream of going wireless!) =)

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I have had the same problem here on Ubuntu as well. REMOVE DownThemAll 1.0 since it is a bug causing it to do such in the about:config.

Reset the values:

network.http.max-connections

network.http.max-connections-per-server

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server

If this doesn't help, create a new profile from scratch and do not install DTA until they fix that issue. Sadly I can't find the bug page.

I confirmed that your suggestion fixes the problem (I used these settings):

network.http.max-connections 24

network.http.max-connections-per-server 8

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy 4

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 2

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Thank you guys for this thread, I was experiencing the same program and I only figured out that clearing my prefs.js file would fix the problem, which was pretty annoying.

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