Firefox Not Responding

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I started noticing about three weeks ago that I was getting frequent ‘Not Responding’ messages on Firefox. After about 10 seconds or so, things would come back okay, but it is a strange, annoying and recurring problem.

The problem is happening across the board too – my work server, my home PC and my laptop:

  • PC running Windows Server 2008 – this was on Firefox version 3.6.3 but upgrading to 3.6.12 made no difference. Loads of plug ins, but the only constantly active ones are the Web Developer Toolbar, Firebug and Delicious. The PageSpeed Firebug plug in is the only one I can remember being updated recently. I also installed the SEOBook toolbar which I suspected may be the cause, but….
  • PC running Windows Vista – running the latest version of Firefox (3.6.12) and also has Web Developer toolbar, but does not have the SEOBook toolbar which kind of rules that one out.
  • Laptop running Windows XP – not many plug ins at all – I use SeachStatus on this, but that’s about it.

So far, I can see that the problem occurs when:

  1. opening a new tab
  2. scrolling down a content and sometimes media rich website

The whole program just freezes and after 5 or so seconds displays the ‘Not Responding’ message at the top of the window. Leaving another 5 or so seconds seems to give it the time it needs so finish or recover from whatever it was doing.

It’s not a show stopper, but is very annoying, and I’ve found myself using Chrome a little more for any browsing where I am not likely to need any of the Firefox plug ins.

Anyone else experiencing this?