Mozilla Firefox, new releases, Add-Ons, tips for customisation

Worked in nightly (55). Are you on Beta?

 

It appears to be my NoScript addon causing it. Works fine after disabling it.

 

I used to used NoScript a lot. But it becomes too much of a hassle trying to figure out what to allow and what not. Firefox does a good job with security on it's own nowadays.

 

Have been trying Cyberfox for a few days, better but it has just started happening again, when it won't load any pages I can't end the CF/FF task either, the whole browser locks up and won't end until the freeze is finished

 

Friend of mine had freezes like one you were talking about week or two earlier, both on FF and Chrome, only on browsers, everything else works perfectly smooth, although he is using MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 8GB on Win 8.1 Pro 64bit. Freezing started to happen one day without any logical explanation. Tried with latest Radeon drivers, earlier drivers, DDU... no change. It stopped when he turned off HW acceleration both in FF and Chrome.

 

I remember when I had my R9 290 and other AMD GPUs I had to disable HW/A in flash, possibly in the browser too, can't remember now, but never had a problem up until recently and drivers, browser version and everything else is the same as it was while it was working without a problem, even rolled back to older drivers and older FF versions without luck

I'll try disabling HW/A but not sure why it would suddenly start causing this problem out of nowhere

 

Same as you, he couldn't figure out exactly what triggered that sudden freezes for few seconds only in FF and Chrome but nothing else gets affected. My guess is that one of the latest Windows Updates has something to do with those browser freezes, nothing else was changed, hardware or software, on his side in past 3 or 4 weeks. I've suggested him to try to disable HW acceleration in both browsers, it was nothing more than shot in the dark, and on my surprise that solved the problem. I've never had any issues with HW acceleration in FF on more than two dozens on my rigs both at home and in office and still still I don't (knock on wood) on variety of rigs, CPUs, GPUs, OSs s from WinXP Pro SP3 32bit to Win8.1 Pro 64bit, all of these are still running FF with HW acceleration enabled and some 8 to 12 installed Add-ons on every FF, e10s enabled...etc.

 

I think this started well after the last WU got installed, but you never know with Windows

I've got HW/A disabled and it's behaving itself so far, but it will be fine for hours and then go through a full retard stage for the rest of the night with random freezes every few minutes that will last about 30 seconds+ each

I almost hope it doesn't fix it because scrolling isn't very smooth any more and I can see tearing with HW/A disabled

But I can live with it I suppose if it does cure it, it's less annoying than not being able to use the browser at all

 

I'm gonna ask him to send me screenshot of latest Windows Updates (Win8.1 Pro 64bit) installed in past month or so and post it here so that you can compare it with your WU list in guess Win10 LTSB 64bit you're running. Iirc his problems started some two, maybe three weeks ago, not sure.

 

Does anyone use Firefox profile on RAM instead of HD? Works quite well for SSD's.

1) about:config
2) browser.cache.disk.enable to "false"
3) verify that browser.cache.memory.enable is set to "true"
4) (right click->new->integer) browser.cache.memory.capacity. Add -1 for a value or pick your choice of KB useage, Something like 500000.

 

Just checked my installed updates and there is one from the 31st May, this LTSB install was clean installed on the 16th, so yea it could well have been near that 31st update when the problems started, I didn't remember there being any more updates since I installed it on the 16th

It doesn't look like anything that should affect the browser but you never know

---KB3150513
This update provides the latest set of definitions for compatibility diagnostics that are performed on the system. The updated definitions help enable Microsoft and its partners to ensure compatibility for all customers who want to install the latest Windows operating system. Installing this update also makes sure that the latest Windows operating system version is correctly offered through Windows Update, based on compatibility results.
---
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3150513/latest-compatibility-definition-update-for-windows

http://www.infoworld.com/article/31...-maligned-windows-patch-kb-3150513-again.html

 

Giving it a shot thanks, apparently setting the memory capacity to "-1" will tell Firefox to dynamically determine the cache size depending on how much RAM you have.

No idea how much RAM it needs for cache, so I've just set it to -1


Appcache still seems to be using the disk though, not sure if there's a way to shift that to RAM too

 

been doing this for years

Though i use 250000

I am assuming you mean the addons and extensions?

 

If you type about:cache it's the last entry shows it is still using the disk, maybe it can't use RAM for that


disk
Number of entries: 613
Maximum storage size: 32768 KiB
Storage in use: 19212 KiB
Storage disk location: none, only stored in memory


appcache
Number of entries: 0
Maximum storage size: 512000 KiB
Storage in use: 0 KiB
Storage disk location: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\s6nvx9rl.default\OfflineCache

 

Code:

Number of entries: 	97
Maximum storage size: 	250000 KiB
Storage in use: 	358 KiB
Storage disk location: 	none, only stored in memory
List Cache Entries
disk
Number of entries: 	97
Maximum storage size: 	250000 KiB
Storage in use: 	358 KiB
Storage disk location: 	none, only stored in memory
List Cache Entries
appcache
Number of entries: 	0
Maximum storage size: 	512000 KiB
Storage in use: 	0 KiB
Storage disk location: 	D:\My User Profiles\Cyberfox\Kyuu\OfflineCache 

 

Nice little tweak here. I just changed my cache to RAM only from my SSD and now my start tabs load a bit faster. As for the appcache, it isn't being used for any of us so far (Extraordinary, tsunami231 and myself) but if I had to guess you could try changing the browser.cache.offline.capacity and browser.cache.offline.enable settings.


memory
Number of entries: 7129
Maximum storage size: 512000 KiB
Storage in use: 92121 KiB
Storage disk location: none, only stored in memory
List Cache Entries


disk
Number of entries: 7129
Maximum storage size: 512000 KiB
Storage in use: 92121 KiB
Storage disk location: none, only stored in memory
List Cache Entries


appcache
Number of entries: 0
Maximum storage size: 512000 KiB
Storage in use: 0 KiB
Storage disk location: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\fdwbk0y7.default\OfflineCache

 

Well unless a coincidence or it's just behaving for now, that seems to have fixed it, had no more freezes or problems since disabling HW/A

PITA not having smooth scrolling and some tearing though

 

Interesting you mention that, I had freezing issue for 4 years on my old system all due to REALTEK AUDIO drivers had issue for all that time with anything using HW/A.

 

I do have Realtek onboard audio, but it is disabled and using a SB soundcard instead

Not had issues when I was using it though

 

Firefox 54 is ready: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/54.0/win64/en-GB/

Hardware VP9 acceleration is still choppy (=unusable).