DescentBB

Well, I'm not really willing to give up my trusty partner, Firefox but I'm wondering...


Why does it seem that it is getting slower and slower at startup with every new release? Just more crap being added or is it something to do with Microscrap's junk interfering with it's interface?

Seems like just a year ago t would pick right up on startup. Now it takes a while to start on any machine I install it on. It's not a big deal but it would be a time saver to have it working right. I'd like to find a fix for this if possible.

I had the same problem.
It seems, it has something to do with the build-in update-function, especially, when your installed base version is a bit older.

I have solved this problem with these steps:

1. backup your bookmarks
2. deinstall Firefox.
3. delete all Mozilla related folders and registry keys
4. restart your pc.
5. install the newest version of forefox.Restore your bookmarks.

I hope it helps.

It is getting slower as it grows. Things like checking for updates during startup, loading more plugins, etc, all slow down the startup time a bit, but the main thing is the core browser itself is getting a lot bigger.

This firefox (2.0.0.12) window that I have had open for a few hours is up to 77 MB of memory use idle, and that is after they cleaned out a lot of the really bad memory leaks. Browsers are just bloated, and grow more bloated as time and updates pile on. We can hope the next major version cleans up some of it and speeds up the loading process but in the end all browser software is doomed to grow slower as time goes on. Rendering websites is a clunky overworked process that doesn't lend itself well to keeping your browser tight and sharp.

Do you have lots of extensions? I know they can slow down the startup process a lot. I'm running firefox 3.0 beta4pre and of course it doesn't support any extensions that I use so I'm running it without extensions and it starts up almost instantly.

Nope. Sometimes I install IE Tabs but I don't think I have at home. Probably need too as it is pretty useful. Other than that, no.

I figured it was probably just the software getting bloated. Even IE opens faster though, which is weird. Of course, I never update IE either so that probably has something to do with it.

Clearing the Private Data helps to speed FireFox back up as well.

EDIT: As I think has also been mentioned ... the installed extensions can do it too. Beware of cool/useful plug-ins that have the side effect of slowing down FireFox's startup time.

There have been a couple that I no longer use for that reason alone.