Did something change ? Forum problems & Firefox

When Firefox 23 became available I started having important problems with this forum. It would constantly be hanging. One problem seemed to be the notification of new posts. Each time attempting to open a post, the browser would freeze. Going into Task Manager I noticed that somehow the site ate a huge amount of memory, often times 500 Mb - >1Gb. There were problems for some other sites, but none so bad (at least not of the ones I visited regularly) as for this forum. It was very frustrating, and I was hoping for an updated or a new Firefox version to be released. It is said, that rolling back the browser to an earlier version is oftentimes not recommended as it might not resolve the problem. I think early last week Firefox 24 became available. It led to some improvements. Instead of the browser hanging on each visit to the JF, these incidents now became limited to the FIRST time one visited the JF after starting up the computer, after rebooting, or after my computer had been locked or a screensaver was up. Very strange. I mention that I (still) run Win XP. I am under the impression that the problem may not have existed in PCs running Vista, Win 7 or Win 8, and obviously not Macs or Linux.

However, today, when visiting the JF the problem appeared suddenly resolved. I am very curious what has happened, and if any settings or software updates have just taken place on the JF. Sorry, but when I meet problems which I can't resolve myself I like to know what caused them so I can learn from it.

Hi CK,

I'm using Firefox 24 with Vista and haven't had any problems. I can't remember having problems with the earlier version either, so it must be something to do with XP and the newer versions of Firefox. Forumotion haven't notified me of any changes either.

I have an old computer at home with XP on that I'll have a look at when I have a moment.

Are there any other members that are having the same problems?

Carlo wrote:Hi CK,

I'm using Firefox 24 with Vista and haven't had any problems. I can't remember having problems with the earlier version either, so it must be something to do with XP and the newer versions of Firefox. Forumotion haven't notified me of any changes either.

I have an old computer at home with XP on that I'll have a look at when I have a moment.

Are there any other members that are having the same problems?

Thanks, Carlo !

By the way, my enthusiasm seems to have been premature, because the problem is back.

The problem might indeed by XP related because I have it on IE too. However, no IE updates occurred between the time that the problem did not exist and the time the problem popped up, and it did pop up promptly after Firefox got updated from version 22 to 23. Strangely enough the problem hasn't remained limited to Firefox. I have suspected it might be JAVA-related, but last week I believe JAVA 7.40 was released, and that didn't solve it either. My cautious guess was that a JAVA conflict could affect both Firefox and IE at the same time. I have no idea though how critical proper functioning of JaVA is to benefit from full and proper functionality of this forum.

Many site specific browser issues within Firefox can be solved by deleting your cookies for the site in question.

Go to [ALT] Tools> Options> Privacy Tab> Remove Individual Cookies and find the forumsmotion.com cookie and delete it. You will have to log back in to the site, but it might solve your problem.

Heisenberg wrote:Many site specific browser issues within Firefox can be solved by deleting your cookies for the site in question.

Go to [ALT] Tools> Options> Privacy Tab> Remove Individual Cookies and find the forumsmotion.com cookie and delete it. You will have to log back in to the site, but it might solve your problem.

Thanks for the suggestion, Alas, no effect, as a check shows that the same problem also affects IE8.

OK, an update ...

When I start Firefox in safemode (the safe mode of Firefox, not the safemode of Windows) the problem does not occur. I am going to play around now with the hardware acceleration and enabling some plug-ins one by one.

Despite substantial research I have done on this topic, I have been unable to solve it.

Looking at Task Manager, I noticed that Firefox hogs disproportionate amounts of memory, and this keeps increasing with as a consequence that normal operation of the computer slows down or is impossible. It has been common to see it use 800-900 Mb of memory, and there have been occasions where simply trying to read the JudoForum with no other tabs or other programs open and seeing it use up to as much as 1.5 Gb of memory. I am sure one can understand that at that point you can't do much else on your computer, certainly not if running XP where the max memory is far more limited than in later programs. At that point the only thing one can do is kill the process, because it won't allow you to exit the program in a normal way either.

A thorough virus scan, and Malware bytes scan, anti-spyware scan, harddisk scan, emptying cache, deleting cookies, are unable to change the problem. The recent update of Firefox from version 23 to 24 did not resolve the problem either.

Researching the topic shows that many more Firefox users have this problem. Unfortunately most posts I have found don't specify their operation system, so I am not sure in how far systems other than XP are effected. I have another machine here that runs Vista, and that one does not have the problem. I tried disabling individual add-ons either, all to no avail. Most people who suffer from the problem complain about the lack of support from Firefox, which usually is limited to general basic comments like "make sure you have the latest Microsoft updates and that you are running the most recent version of Firefox, and you might try disabling add-ons". So there is a general problem in Firefox refusing to accept any responsibility and blaming other vendors, nor does it seem to be wanting to accept that it are precisely its own latest updates that cause the problem.

In the end, I had no choice than to follow the other Firefox users who have been struggling with this problem, some of whom are computer experts and have been unable to solve the problem, that is: downgrade to an earlier version. Firefox adamantly discourages its users from doing that warning for security problems, but one has the feeling that this has more to do with liability. In any case, downgrading back to Firefox 22 or 21 (the problem started with Firefox 23 and continued with version 24) seems to have taken care of the problem (so far), although I can't say for sure. For example, when I did the downgrade 2 hours ago, I noticed memory use by Firefox being down to 198 Mb and my computer was flying faster than it has done in 2 months, but even now memory use already back up to 450 Mb. It remains to be seen if the memory hogging will keep increasing. If so, I will notice soon as my computer will then again become very slow. I'll keep you informed.

Checking in again an hour later, Firefox memory use now above 600 Mb, single window open, no clips running, no meaningful operations since an hour ago.

And another update. We're 6 hours further or so, and I just had to kill Firefox via Taskmanager. With just a single page open on the JudoFourm, it was using 1.5 Gb of memory, meaning the computer was stalling and had become useless. Sad news is thus that despite downgrading the problem has not gone away. Next step would probably to remove Firefox completely from my machine and do a clean install of version 22.