Does Firefox slow down your computer?

Answer 1

Firefox has always been somewhat of a memory hog, so try adding more RAM to your computer (or getting a new one, although RAM is extremely cheap, and a computer is not). If this is not an option, try uninstalling all unnecessary add-ons. If this doesn't help, try scanning your computer to see if a virus is present (use Avast! or AVG Free, both are free).

If the above doesn't work, please consider that Firefox has recently been having problems with adobe flash as well. Even if you aren't watching a video currently, if you had at one point since your most resent start up of fire fox it holds onto portions of that video's or web application's memory until it shuts down. The more videos or web programs that open that use flash (adobe flash) the more memory will be used until eventually you're stacking over 5,000 mb's in your RAM. This is not the fault of any add-on's such as Java or Add Block Plus.

Solutions:

1) Restart Firefox

2) YouTube seems to be the biggest culprit/cause of the memory leakage (or extra storage of memory through flash player onto your RAM.) So simply switch to HTML5 format. Various ways of doing this but here are a few options.

2.1) Go to youtube .com/html5 or Google search it and at the bottom there should be a button that says something like, "play all videos in HTML5", your current settings should be/generally are set to use "default".

2.2) Use add-ons such as YouTube ALL HTML5. They are free to download and easy to find using google, other default search providers, or simply click on tools > add-ons to open Firefox's add-on center where you will be able to search and download for free.

2) Uninstall Flash player and/or it's add-on's/extensions so they won't function with firefox (not as recommended as many web applications use Flash. Unless you know exactly what to reroute all web applications through, just don't do it. Leave it on so you may default back to it if necessary. If you do disable it however then most websites, such as youtube, should default to another player or HTML5 format.)

3) install an add on that stops flash player. (YouTube center used to work great, but now you tube has learned how to block most of it's applications)

3.1) Install video without flash (My favorite. However, youtube comments and other services won't work unless you disable it which can be done by pressing the add on's button that can be installed next to your search bar. You may need to reload the webpage once enabled/disabled. As this is such a hassle, even though I really like this player as it's lightning fast on my computer and super High Def, the hassle of having to disable and re enable is too much a hassle for the average user.)

3.2) Another option is to install VLC youtube shortcut (VLC player, which is free to download, will be needed for this one) or other similar programs. What it does is will allow your web videos to stream directly through a program on your coumputer (such as VLC my favoite rendering program)

Please take note that I have tried dozens of solutions and I have found no others that work and that Flash is indeed the main problem. Other solutions will improve performance marginally, by about 20%, but why settle for less then 100% of your computers capacity?

Answer 2

Answer

Firefox is a fast loading web browser and works fine in old computer or OS.

But still it depends on the browser version you use and the addons installed within.

So once disable the addon and look if noticeable change in speed is varied or not.

If not upgrade you browser and disable addon those not required frequently.

Firefox can take some time to load if you have an older computer because Firefox requires a lot of memory to make it work but, once it does, it loads websites rather quickly and causes no problems.

Answer 3

Firefox can cause computer slow-downs, especially if it has too many add-ons and is not optimized for your internet connection settings and your hardware. If you feel that Firefox is too slow, you should optimize the settings (you can use optimization software to do that) or switch to a more lightweight browser, like Google Chrome.

If the above doesn't work, please consider that Firefox has recently been having problems with adobe flash as well. Even if you aren't watching a video currently, if you had at one point since your most resent start up of fire fox it holds onto portions of that video's or web application's memory until it shuts down. The more videos or web programs that open that use flash (adobe flash) the more memory will be used until eventually you're stacking over 5,000 mb's in your RAM. This is not the fault of any add-on's such as Java or Add Block Plus.

Solutions:

1) Restart Firefox

2) Youtube seems to be the biggest culprit/cause of the memory leakage (or extra storage of memory through flash player onto your RAM.) So simply switch to HTML5 format. Various ways of doing this but here are a few options.

2.1) Go to youtube.com/html5 or google search it and at the bottom there should be a button that says something like, "play all videos in HTML5", your current settings should be/generally are set to use "default".

2.2) Use add-ons such as YouTube ALL HTML5. They are free to download and easy to find using google, other default search providers, or simply click on tools > add-ons to open Firefox's add-on center where you will be able to search and download for free.

2) Uninstall Flash player and/or it's add-on's/extensions so they won't function with firefox (not as recommended as many web applications use Flash. Unless you know exactly what to reroute all web applications through, just don't do it. Leave it on so you may default back to it if necessary. If you do disable it however then most websites, such as youtube, should default to another player or HTML5 format.)

3) install an add on that stops flash player. (YouTube center used to work great, but now you tube has learned how to block most of it's applications)

3.1) Install video without flash (My favorite. However, youtube comments and other services won't work unless you disable it which can be done by pressing the add on's button that can be installed next to your search bar. You may need to reload the webpage once enabled/disabled. As this is such a hassle, even though I really like this player as it's lightning fast on my computer and super High Def, the hassle of having to disable and re enable is too much a hassle for the average user.)

3.2) Another option is to install VLC youtube shortcut (VLC player, which is free to download, will be needed for this one) or other similar programs. What it does is will allow your web videos to stream directly through a program on your coumputer (such as VLC my favoite rendering program)

Please take note that I have tried dozens of solutions and I have found no others that work and that Flash is indeed the main problem. Other solutions will improve performance marginally, by about 20%, but why settle for less then 100% of your computers capacity?

Answer 4

This can be caused by a few things. Firefox has been known to have a major problem with memory leaks for many years and so if you have the software running for several hours, especially if you have lots of tabs open, then you can bring your computer to a crawl due to the continued consumption of more and more RAM. Also if your Internet cache is set to too large of a size, this can slow down the operation as well. The best amount at which to set this is a nice and small 20 megabytes (yes, megabytes, not gigabytes).

If you have any other questions or would like further assistance in making sure that you have the settings configured correctly, feel free to drop me a line.

Answer 5

Firefox slows down some times because of the internet pression.

Answer 6

What leads you to believe your computer operating system's slowdown is caused by an internet browser