Browser freezing, unfreezes after certain things are done

PC. Firefox 3.6.10 using tabbed browsing. Windows 7. Scrollwheel mouse. Dell keyboard.

This happens many times a day on this board.

I’ll open a page. It will start loading. The scroll wheel on my mouse will work and I can scroll down the page. Then the scroll wheel will stop working. Or, if I’m typing in the quick reply field, the keystrokes will stop recording.

If I switch to another tab, the keyboard and scrollwheel will work fine in that tab. I switch back to the original tab and they do not work.

If I reload the page, the scroll wheel and keyboard will usually work.

If I click on the Adblock button in the upper right corner and then either leave it clicked or reclick it, the scroll wheel and keyboard will work.

If I uninstall Adblock, I still get the frozen browser, but then I don’t have the easy “push this button and it unfreezes” workaround.

It doesn’t appear to matter how many tabs I have open. It doesn’t seem to matter what other pages I have open.

Any ideas?

Has this always happened, or only since what change or update?

My guess is that, you being a guest and consequently subject to ads, the tab is paused waiting for data to download from the ad server. As I understand it Adblock doesn’t stop that, it merely prevents it from displaying.

Adblock Plus prevents whatever it’s configured to block from downloading. It’s the various ad blockers for Chrome that can’t prevent ads from downloading; matter of fact, that’s been the one thing stopping me from using Chrome regularly.

ETA: jsgoddess, what add-ons and plugins do you have installed?

I have Adblock (as I mentioned) and Xmarks. That’s it. I’m running the same thing on four computers, and only the one at work with Windows 7 has this problem. The others are running XP. It’s been going on for months, at least six, so there have been a number of updates since then, but I haven’t done a reinstall or anything.

Try updating Flash and Java.

It could be one of the javascripts that is trying to load and misbehaving. There are several that try to load but which I have blocked using noscript.

exelate
google analytics
quantcast
Rubiconproject
cdnlayer.com
googleapis.com

any one of these could be the problem. I would suggest trying out the noscript plugin. It’s a little bit of a pain in the ass since it prohibits all scripts until you specifically allow them (on a per site basis), but you only have to allow them once (or on a temporary basis).

edit - btw, using noscript will improve your security greatly since malicious scripts will never get to run unless you allow them.

I’ve installed noscript. I’m still getting the same thing. I’m checking to see if I have the most recent flash. My java is up-to-date.

I forgot an add-on. I also have TabMix Plus on this browser. I’m going to turn it off to see if that changes anything.

I have this issue too. I don’t remember any of the older versions giving me this problem, but for the last month or two, I’ve been noticing random tabs becoming unresponsive for 1 or 2 seconds.

TabMix Plus disabled. Noscript installed. No better.

I’m also seeing this behavior on Wikipedia. I don’t know if that means it’s getting worse or if it means I just hadn’t noticed before.

If it unfreezes on its own, maybe you have a problem with the sessionstore interval.

Take a look at this: http://www.techmynd.com/firefox-freezes-for-a-moment-after-every-10-sec-fix/

For the record, mine doesn’t unfreeze on its own, but I tried tweaking this anyway. No dice.

Thanks, I changed it to 60s. I’m not sure what it is supposed to do but, hopefully, it will work.

I used to have this problem all the time with earlier versions of Firefox. But this only happens in 3.6.10 after I’ve watched a memory-leaking flash video (like the longer ones from blip.tv)

If you are running NoScript disable googleapis.com and see if your problem doesn’t go away. I’ve experienced this same problem on my wife’s Win7 laptop w/ FF and on my own laptop running FF on Ubuntu. Let’s hope Google gets this fixed. They do appear to be aware of it.