I have an HP a1330n running XP. Lately, I'm finding it very slow accessing Firefox. I am up to date on the latest version. Firefox itself seems to be slower loading than before but once to a website you pull your hair out waiting for it to change pages. I'm getting a "connecting" message in the upper left corner with the spinning icon. After 3 or 4 minutes it may change pages and sometimes if I hit the "X" on the address bar and then hit the reload current page (in the same location as the X I just mentioned) it will change.
I have McAfee and it's up to date also - it tells me I'm protected. I've run Spybot also and it tells me I'm clean.
What else can I tell you or what other info do you need?
The other thing I forgot to mention is when I check device mgr Firefox is generally the one causing my CPU usage to go to 100%. Of the 100% FF is usually 75% to 92%. If I shut FF down my CPU usage will drop into the teens of single digits. I reload FF and CPU will go up to 50% or so and then before long FF is back up to the 75 - 92% range & CPU at 100%.
I reset Firefox and it seems better. I've been playing with it the last couple of days checking it at different times of the day. I'm not sure if that's totally resolved it because it's still a little slow loading & changing pages and it's still a CPU hog. At least it's not taking 3 - 4 minutes to change pages anymore.
I was actually hoping we might try some other things to determine why it's consuming so much cpu usage and still a bit slow. I do appreciate the first tip you gave me though.
Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab (for Windows 8, the Startup tab has a link to open Task Manager/Startup tab. Use that.), record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Reboot and see if it runs better.
If yes then use msconfig to enable several items at a time till you find the culprit.
If no, start msconfig and click on the Services tab.
Check the Hide All Microsoft Services box, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Again, do a regular boot, see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable services till you find the culprit.
Once you've found the culprit, uninstall it or find out how to eliminate it from your system. Simply disabling it in msconfig is a temporary fix at best.
Enable everything else you disabled.
Everything I do seems to point to Firefox as the culprit. I shut down FF and loaded IE. Things were much better - even having multiple browsers open. The CPU usage would surge occasionally when playing a video from various sites but would settle back down. With IE open I'd open FF and the CPU usage surged and if I then opened a video with FF, well forget it. I close FF and things get back to normal. The results were the same in safe mode.
Deleting all the start ups and services had no effect on FF either. As soon as I loaded FF everything bogged down. Loading FF was difficult at times, switching pages was hard (but better after I reset it earlier) and CPU usage continued to surge. It just seems like FF is doing something it shouldn't be doing to me.
Ok, just disabled them all and FF was about 5% of CPU usage and I opened a video and FF soared to 98% and total CPU usage is 100%. Shut down the video and FF goes to 2% and CPU usage to 19% and as low as 4%.
With no video playing and changing webpages FF spikes to 68% but after the pages loads, which is fairly quickly, it backs back down to 3%.
Loading a picture runs FF up to 78% before settling back down.
Opening a 3rd browser (I use MSN as my homepage) takes FF to 16% and CPU to 29%.
Does this help? And do you want me to start adding back the extensions?
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