Smolderingfox
Aug. 17th, 2010 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThis is really starting to annoy me.
At home, I rely on Firefox for my websurfing. Over the past few months, it has begun displaying more and more flaky behavior, and the latest is a bit beyond the bounds.
First, and ongoing for several months: I use a dialup connection. When I launch Firefox, a dialogue box for establishing that connection appears, containing my username and password. I click "Connect", and it goes to work. The connection once established, Firefox goes for my homepage - and doesn't find it. I hit "refresh", and this time the connection goes through. (I suspect this isn't actually Firefox's fault, because something similar happens with Pegasus Mail. I think something in my security suite is interfering with the timing of the initial contact somehow.)
Second: from time to time, for no discernible reason, the computer seems to lose track of the fact that it's already connected; the "connection" dialogue appears, and whatever transmission is actually in progress freezes until I hit "cancel". This may persist for quite some time, at intervals of anywhere between a few seconds and a couple of minutes.
Third: if I have more than one tab open, sometimes - not always - shifting from one tab to another (by Ctrl-PgUp or by click, it makes no difference) causes the display to freeze for a while - again, a few seconds to a minute. I think it's only the display that freezes, though, because when it unlocks there is often a rapid update.
Fourth: if I have a tab that has gone through several sites and fails to find the next target, hitting "refresh" may cause it to look again for the next target (as desired), but it may also cause it to refresh one of the earlier sites, apparently randomly selected.
Fifth, and most annoying: sometimes when I hit the "close" button, the Firefox application shuts down, but the firefox.exe process does not - with the result that I can't restart Firefox until I manually close the process or reboot.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to deal with any of these irritations? (Suggestions that I switch to another browser will be considered, but they will be far down on my preference list.)
At home, I rely on Firefox for my websurfing. Over the past few months, it has begun displaying more and more flaky behavior, and the latest is a bit beyond the bounds.
First, and ongoing for several months: I use a dialup connection. When I launch Firefox, a dialogue box for establishing that connection appears, containing my username and password. I click "Connect", and it goes to work. The connection once established, Firefox goes for my homepage - and doesn't find it. I hit "refresh", and this time the connection goes through. (I suspect this isn't actually Firefox's fault, because something similar happens with Pegasus Mail. I think something in my security suite is interfering with the timing of the initial contact somehow.)
Second: from time to time, for no discernible reason, the computer seems to lose track of the fact that it's already connected; the "connection" dialogue appears, and whatever transmission is actually in progress freezes until I hit "cancel". This may persist for quite some time, at intervals of anywhere between a few seconds and a couple of minutes.
Third: if I have more than one tab open, sometimes - not always - shifting from one tab to another (by Ctrl-PgUp or by click, it makes no difference) causes the display to freeze for a while - again, a few seconds to a minute. I think it's only the display that freezes, though, because when it unlocks there is often a rapid update.
Fourth: if I have a tab that has gone through several sites and fails to find the next target, hitting "refresh" may cause it to look again for the next target (as desired), but it may also cause it to refresh one of the earlier sites, apparently randomly selected.
Fifth, and most annoying: sometimes when I hit the "close" button, the Firefox application shuts down, but the firefox.exe process does not - with the result that I can't restart Firefox until I manually close the process or reboot.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to deal with any of these irritations? (Suggestions that I switch to another browser will be considered, but they will be far down on my preference list.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 12:44 pm (UTC)If you are running any Norton or Symantec products, uninstall them. Stick on Avast or AVG for antivirus, and don't turn on any of the other features (like web scanning, email scanning and so on. You're trying to reduce load on your internet connectivity). Obviously, be a bit more cautious when opening email messages while you have email AV scanning off.
If none of that helps, try an alternate browser like Opera, which is usually pretty rock-solid. The aim is to see whether it's your dial-up that's causing the problem, or your security/AV suite.