Firefox 16.0.2 slows everything down in Windows 8

Firefox 16.0.2 (the latest version) was working ok when I installed it, but today the whole system slowed down and only worked intermittently and screens kept losing focus before I could type in passwords, whenever Firefox was running.

I uninstalled Firefox and all plugins & settings and just ran IE for a while and everything runs smoothly. So I downloaded Waterfox (a 64 bit build from the Firefox code) and installed that. It runs perfectly now too.

I don't know what was wrong with Firefox, but I didn't have as many addons in it as I had before in Windows 7. Windows 8 was a clean (reformatted HD) installation, so there's no rubbish from the old system there.

user169354

Posted 2012-11-01T11:16:21.377

Reputation: 96

This sounds like a Firefox bug. I would open a bug report to Mozilla – Ramhound – 2012-11-01T11:22:22.780

1Sounds more like an addon bug. I'm on beta update channel, currently on FF17 and no problems AT ALL. Try running with all addons disabled, reinstall flash. – Bojan Kogoj – 2012-11-01T12:12:31.213

I think it is a problem with the Flash plug-in for Mozilla – pratnala – 2012-11-10T11:20:34.423

Answers

Make sure you have not got a firewall blocking firefox or certain plugins. Try running without plugins to check if it is a plugin problem. Update all plugins. It could be a problem with flash as well which sometimes causes excess memory usage. For this disable hardware accelration in flash settings. I guess one of the above solutions must solve the problem.

demonslayer

Posted 2012-11-01T11:16:21.377

Reputation: 76

I know in windows 7 Flash would really slow everything down. I went into settings and disabled hardware acceleration and it stopped.

Tom bob

Posted 2012-11-01T11:16:21.377

Reputation: 11