I have a similar experience that unresponsive plug ins slow the system to a crawl. The two buttons you've listed don't work for me well either. I've found they are triggered on specific website pages. So I try to figure out what i just opened that's doing it, and shut that page. The right button of stop script, actually sometimes does work, though it takes time. It's looping because soemthing's causing the page to reload and restart the script.

If you can sneak in a right click on the tab close it, that would work.

Can you sneak in and get to the dropdown arrow on the far right, which will show a list of tabs?

I'd suggest opening in safemode with add-ons turned off, but to do that, you'd need to get the script to give you a break.

I haven't noticed which plug in is doing it most often, but it appears to be a programming issue with how the specific page is interacting with the plug in, and not a FF problem itself.

Can you start up Firefox directly to the Add-ons page? To do that, you can use the "Run" dialog or the system search box. Paste the following and press Enter to load it:

firefox.exe -url "about:addons"

Of course, Firefox might also do a crash recovery and load a problem page... working around that requires an additional step if it happens.

On the Add-ons page, left column, Click Plugins. Then on the right side, try setting all nonessential plugins to "Never Activate" to disable them for the time being.

For those which you use regularly, try setting them to "Ask to Activate" (except global plugins like password managers that need to remain on "Always Activate").

"Ask to Activate", also known as "click to play" defers plugin loading so you can see whether it is really required or possibly just a vector for advertising or tracking.

With this setting, when you visit a site that wants to use a particular plugin, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and usually (but not always) one of the following: a link in a black rectangle in the page or an infobar sliding down between the toolbar area and the page.

The plugin notification icon in the address bar typically looks like a small, dark gray Lego block. When the page wants to use a blocked plugin, the icon turns red to alert you to the concern.

If you see a good reason to use that plugin, and the site looks trustworthy, you can go ahead and click the notification icon in the address bar to allow it. You can trust the site for the time being or permanently.

Hopefully this will minimize issues while you sort out the problem plugin or site(s).

jscher2000 said

Can you start up Firefox directly to the Add-ons page? To do that, you can use the "Run" dialog or the system search box. Paste the following and press Enter to load it: firefox.exe -url "about:addons" I cannot find the "Run" dialog on Windows 10. Tried to paste your command into C:\ but it wouldn't work either.

Hi SingingCats, if Run isn't in the menu anywhere, hold down the "Windows" key on the keyboard and tap the R key to call up the Run dialog.

The problem plug-in is definitely Shockwave Flash (Adobe, I think), but this is really necessary to see many posted video clips, including those I absolutely trust. I did manage to mark it Ask to Activate, so other areas of the browser work, but I guess I'll have to stick with Edge for the videos. Not happy about that!

One thing that might help is to disable the protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin. That feature has security benefits, but seems to have serious compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it using the Add-ons page. Either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Plugins. On the right side, find "Shockwave Flash" and click the More link. Then uncheck the box for "Enable Adobe Flash protected mode" and try that for a day to see whether it helps.

So far, so good. I'm hoping you helped me fix it for more than a couple of days!

curls said

I have a similar experience that unresponsive plug ins slow the system to a crawl. The two buttons you've listed don't work for me well either. I've found they are triggered on specific website pages. So I try to figure out what i just opened that's doing it, and shut that page. The right button of stop script, actually sometimes does work, though it takes time. It's looping because soemthing's causing the page to reload and restart the script. If you can sneak in a right click on the tab close it, that would work. Can you sneak in and get to the dropdown arrow on the far right, which will show a list of tabs? I'd suggest opening in safemode with add-ons turned off, but to do that, you'd need to get the script to give you a break. I haven't noticed which plug in is doing it most often, but it appears to be a programming issue with how the specific page is interacting with the plug in, and not a FF problem itself.

It's not the "stop script" error message, which I've also received, and which I believe you're right in saying is directly related to specific pages. This one was a plug-in not working (for Shockwave Flash, I'm pretty sure), and honestly, if I can't use it on FF, then it IS a FF problem, because it causes me to find another browser that doesn't exhibit the problem. However, I have disabled the protected mode, as suggested by jscher2000, which seems to have stopped the problem . . . at least for now!