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Every half hour Firefox 13 freezes for 1-2 minutes

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Every half hour Firefox 13.0.1 freezes for 1-2 minutes. No webpages will load and any downloads stop (and sometimes fail, most annoying). The time this occurs changes every time I reboot, but it always seems to be a multiple of five minutes, e.g. at 5 minutes past the hour and 35 minutes past the hour, or 15 minutes and 45 minutes past the hour. Neither Avast nor Malwarebytes can find anything that might be causing it.

Every half hour Firefox 13.0.1 freezes for 1-2 minutes. No webpages will load and any downloads stop (and sometimes fail, most annoying). The time this occurs changes every time I reboot, but it always seems to be a multiple of five minutes, e.g. at 5 minutes past the hour and 35 minutes past the hour, or 15 minutes and 45 minutes past the hour. Neither Avast nor Malwarebytes can find anything that might be causing it.

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Try the Firefox SafeMode to see how it works there.
A troubleshooting mode, which disables most Add-ons.
(If you're not using it, switch to the Default Theme.)

  • You can open the Firefox 4.0+ SafeMode by holding the Shft key when you use the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • Or use the Help menu item, click on Restart with Add-ons Disabled... while Firefox is running.

Don't select anything right now, just use "Continue in SafeMode."

To exit the Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before using the Firefox shortcut (without the Shft key) to open it again.

If it is good in the Firefox SafeMode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

When you figure out what is causing that, please let us know. It might help other user's who have that problem.

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I started up FF in Safe Mode which served to remind me how unbearable the web is without ad suppression but alas did not stop the problem from continuing to occur.

I forgot to mention earlier that while the FF problem is occurring there is no effect on other connections to the internet like torrent downloads which continue normally.

Most odd.

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Try a lower upload/download rate in torrent client and check it again.


thank you

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I shut down the torrent application altogether which had no effect on the problem.

I should mention that although the minutes past the hour that it happens changes each time I reboot, it always happens precisely every 30 minutes, to the second as far as I can tell, and the minutes past the hour are always divisible by 5.

I am starting to wonder if I have a virus that neither Avax nor Malwarebytes can detect that is designed to interfere with downloads.

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It suddenly stopped happening yesterday for no apparent reason but is back today. I guess I will download another browser and see if it happens when I use it.

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If hangs are periodic, it may be caused by a corrupted places database. See the following:

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It also happens with Chrome so now I am going to investigate whether it caused by Avast

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It looks like it is being caused by the Avast Web Shield because it stops happening when I shut it down and starts happening again when I reactivate it. (To muddy the waters, it also occasionally has stopped happening all on its own without me doing anything, in which case I put off rebooting as long as possible because it starts happening again when I reboot.)

I have a ticket in at Avast so hope they can tell me how to stop it happening at all.

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