What is wrong with my Firefox?

[Mehmsy]

Firefox has been acting funny with me over the past few days -- I'll be browsing and seemingly at random, the speed at which the program loads pages will grind to a halt. It seems to be stuck at the 'looking up URL' stage, and stays that way for a few minutes or I restart the program. Needless to say, it's exceedingly frustrating. This problem doesn't occur when I browse with Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, and rebooting my wireless hub hasn't helped either.

Any ideas? Or should I just make the switch to Chrome?

[777]

Which version of Firefox are you running?

[munchingfoo]

Although they say they have they haven't fixed all the memory issues yet. Next time it happens, open up the task manager and see how much memory firefox is using. If it's more than say 200mb, then it's a known memory issue a restart is the only solution I know of.

[Mehmsy]

I'm on the newest version, but the problem isn't that the program locks up and the memory usage shoots up -- Firefox simply remains stuck at "Looking up..." in the status bar while working fine otherwise and requires a restart before I can browse properly again. Anyway, it's less of a problem since I restarted my router, but it still happens from time to time.

[Fawksie]

Sounds like flaky DNS. My POS Netgear router periodically drops up to 60% of packets between me and it, and between it and the internet, and DNS doesn't really work reliably under those conditions.

[househunter]

Check connection settings within Firefox.

Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Connection settings.

Post what you see in there.

[househunter]

Also you're not downloading any torrents are you?

[Mehmsy]

Not downloading any torrents. Under connection settings, I've got 'no proxy' selected.

[Paul Carey]

Try flushing the DNS cache -

Get a Command Line / Dos prompt and do the following :-

ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns

[Mehmsy]

Thank you for the suggestion, but that hasn't worked either. I'm somewhat convinced the problem is solely with Firefox, because Google Chrome doesn't give me the same issue...

[Paul Carey]

okay, open firefox and in the address bar type about:config
then in the filter at the top type dns
and post up what you have there.

[Mehmsy]

Right, here it is:

network.dns.disableIPv6 is set to true
network.dns.ipv4onlydomains is set to default string
network.proxy.socks_remote_dns is set to false.

Thanks again!

[Paul Carey]

Might do nothing, but on the 3 PC's I have firefox installed on I have network.dns.disableIPv6 set to false. Double click on that setting to make it false and see how you get on.

[orudge]

If disableIPv6 is set to false, then in theory it will take longer for web sites to load, as it will check for an IPv6 (not commonly used at the moment) address before it checks for an IPv4 address (what the vast majority of web sites use). So having that set to true shouldn't cause problems.

If I get such problems, I tend to find it's due to another program on the system - often a torrent client will be the issue, or sometimes Skype will (it has a habit of turning you into a "supernode", where lots of other clients will route their conversations through you, transparently, slowing down your connection). Try restarting any other Internet-using programs, as well as Firefox (Firefox 3 will remember your open tabs if you tell it to), and see if that helps.

[Mehmsy]

So far, disabling that option seems to have done the trick... but you never know!

As for other internet-using programs, I don't really think that is the case. Firefox'll lock up when I'm not running anything else, and other browsers never do, so I'm fairly convinced that it's an issue with the program itself. I've been Googling, and I'm not the only person to encounter this problem; unfortunately there is no posted solution. I'm guessing it's a problem with the most recent version of Firefox, or with my BT connection at home. Restarting the router hasn't helped, so I might give BT a call and see what happens.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Edit: No, it's still happening.

[theshadowhost]

maybe someone has asked this already ( i skimmed the thread):

do you have any firefox apps installed that might be slowing it down?

[Mehmsy]

Some other threads on other message boards have blamed it on FasterFox, which I do not run. Aside from that, I don't think my applications tamper with the internet.