Hi Reos,

When you reinstall Firefox it still uses your old profile with all the legacy stuff that you had. That said, you are luck, there's a new feature that allows you to "Reset" Firefox. This will remove some of the bits that may be causing problems while it keeps your bookmarks and some of the other important stuff safe.

Check it out and let me know if it works: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

Hi Ibai,

Thanks for the help.

I followed the instructions at "Reset Firefox" and now the browser function more or less as before.

Thanks a lot ;)

Reos

We ran into the same slowdown issues with FireFox 17 last month and found a solution that actually works. Our profiles were several years old and I am quite convinced that over time they deteriorated thanks to conflicts between add-ons, etc. Here's the step-by-step procedure we used to bring our FireFox installations back to life, speedy and stable. (And I must report that the beta of FF18 really speeds up FF like never before).

Make a list of the add-ons (extensions and appearance) you have installed. You might want to download the latest versions of each add-on to a directory on your hard drive for installing after you rebuild your profile. With earlier versions of FireFox, you can use the extension "InfoLister" to create the list. In FF 17, go to Help, and then Troubleshooting Information which instantly gives you a list of your extensions (and Important Modified Preferences). Print the list - you'll want it later when you reinstall your add-ons.

Now, here are two alternatives from which to choose. The first one, we did not do, but I realize in retropsect that it may work for folks and save you a lot of time. The second one is what we did, albeit it is more time consuming.

First, however, take a screen shot of your FireFox window so you know where you like the various icons to be placed. Print it.

Before doing either of these, you should go into your Add-Ons Manager and export settings for all of the extensions that allow you to. This way when you recreate your profile, you can simply import the settings. There will be a lot of extensions that don't allow you to do this. You should write down the settings for each of them so you don't have to reinvent the wheel in your new profile (or take screen shots).

If you don't already have them, install the FEBE and CLEO extensions (available at http://softwarebychuck.com/ ). CLEO combines nearly all of your extensions (xpi files) into a single xpi file with which to reinstall nearly all of your extensions after you have cleaned up your profile according to the instructions that follow below. Now some extensions will not be included -- you'll have to install those separately. And I caution that the process might not work as well as the second alternative I'm about to describe. But this first alternative can save you a few hours if you have a lot of extensions installed. I must caution, however, that I didn't do this with the existing extensions in our profiles because I didn't think of it. But it might work well for you (assuming that the extension xpi files are fine and I can't think of any reason for them not to be).

The second alternative which is the one that we actually used will require you to individually reinstall each extension -- but if you exported the settings for those that allow it, you can easily import those settings and save a lot of time. In this alternative you simply don't use CLEO to create the single xpi file of extensions and you just plan to reinstall those you want one by one.

Whichever alternative you use, the remaining steps are pretty much the same:

(1) From the Help Menu, select "Troubleshoot Information." Then click (in the upper right hand corner) the "Reset FireFox" button. This brings up a small window that tells you what is saved when you reset FireFox (cookies, bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords, saved form history). Click on the "reset FireFox" button and a new profile will be created without any add-ons. This creates a new profile without an add-ons.

(2) Reinstall your add-ons one by one making sure that none of them slow down your now very speedy FireFox. Alternatively if you used the first option and created a single xpi file of extensions with CLEO, install that file. Hopefully, none of these extensions will slow down FireFox. It's a risk, but it does save hours if you have lots of extensions.

(3) Import the settings you saved for the extensions that allowed you to export them. Adjusst the settings in the other extensions.

(4) Recreate the appearance you want in FireFox by going to the View Menu and selecting the Toolbars you want and by clicking on "Customize" to place icons where you want them.

This procedure should enable you have the speedy FireFox to which you had grown accustomed.

had the same problem on my friends PC, tried everything above without success

other browsers were fine, then I thought there must some problems how FF connects to network

so the following solved the problem: Firefox Options - Advanced - Network - Connection Settings tick "No Proxy"

I've reset FF, reloaded FF still have slow response when loading a website initially. If I don't close the first website before going to a second it's better. My other computer which is run wirelessly though a router works fine.

A possible cause is security software (firewall,anti-virus) that blocks or restricts Firefox or the plugin-container process without informing you, possibly after detecting changes (update) to the Firefox program.

Remove all rules for Firefox and the plugin-container from the permissions list in the firewall and let your firewall ask again for permission to get full unrestricted access to internet for Firefox and the plugin-container process and the updater process.

See:

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Server+not+found
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firewalls

Hello, I'd like to offer this insight. I have a Windows 7 system and was experiencing this slowdown when using firefox. IE worked great, but I prefer ffmoz. After many weeks of trial and error I found this solution: When java updates were taking me to their website to chose a download, it decided that my system was 32 bit and to use that download, it didn't dawn on me at the time but, I have a 64 bit system. However I found that for firefox to work successfully I had to download and install BOTH 32 and 64 versions. When the latest java version came out last week I avoided it because I had finally got the system back on pace. Finally I reinstalled both versions again and everything is still working fine. I hope this helps some of you out there!

There seem to be many different causes for slowing down Firefox. My Firefox was extremely slow (and fan and GPU were working at their limits) until I turned off "use hardware acceleration" in the Firefox settings. Since then, GPU temperature is 20 degrees lower, fan is quiet and Firefox is fast again.