Closing Firefox 3.5 eats my CPU cycles

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WinXP Prof SP3
My first impression of FX 3.5 was that it was slow to load.

And then I noticed my PC’s fans spinning up after I I had closed FX 3.5 down. Going into Task Manager I saw that firefox.exe was gobbling up 99% of the CPU cycles. And I had to kill the process from Task Manager to get my CPU back again.

Uninstall and reinstall 3.5—same deal. (BTW It isn’t using any CPU when open and sitting idle).

Uninstall 3.5 and reinstall 3.0.11—same CPU gobbling behaviour on closing.

Complete uninstall including settings; registry clean with CCleaner and reinstall 3.0.11— same problem.

Try IE7—it’s doing the 99% CPU gobble too with iexplore.exe when you close IE down in the normal manner.

Try Opera 9.64—works a charm, closes as it should.

Latest find is that if IE or FX is closed from the Applications tab of Task Manager everything is sweet.

Does anyone have any ideas??? TIA

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My first impression of FX 3.5 was that it was slow to load.

… I saw that firefox.exe was gobbling up 99% of the CPU cycles. And I had to kill the process from Task Manager to get my CPU back again.

Jeez, I don’t know how to help you except to say that it looks like something ‘else’ in your system is doing the grabbing or making Fx do it. Do you have any other ‘utility’ software running that might cause the affliction to not only Fx but IE as well?

I just tried it on my machine, also XP SP3, with task mgr open and it closes immediately without grabbing any cycles. BTW, mine also starts in a couple of seconds from a restart situation. When I REBOOT the machine, Fx takes a few seconds longer that first time.

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As Bigaldoc notes, it’s strange that both Firefox and Internet Explorer show this behavior.

You might try Process Monitor (free from Microsoft) to check what the browser is doing when it’s closing.

Also try starting Firefox in safe mode (there should be an entry for this in your Start > Programs menu). If this closes quickly, there might be a problem with your Firefox profile.

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In addition to the above, clean out your Internet Explorer temporary files, there is a known problem that can cause Firefox 3.5 to be slow if there are a lot of IE temporary files. (Mozilla are working on this)

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In addition to the above, clean out your Internet Explorer temporary files, there is a known problem that can cause Firefox 3.5 to be slow if there are a lot of IE temporary files. (Mozilla are working on this)

TONY ! ! ! !

My desktop acted the same way as Kiwi Keith and your suggestion worked.

Surprisingly, the notebook had no problems at all. Probably because I rarely use IE and have automatic cookie and cache cleaners running on that machine.

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Thanks for the suggestions folks. Clearing the cache, etc didn’t work. I tried some online virus checkers—I didn’t find anything of relevance.

What I did find during my googling was a reference to firewalls and it occurred to me that my firewall (Comodo) had recently announced an update which I had installed, (prior to my troubles). My plan was to uninstall Comodo and try another firewall after checking for viruses, trojans, etc.

During one of the interminable online virus checks (it was an overnight job) Comodo announced another update, which I installed.

And guess what…..

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During one of the interminable online virus checks (it was an overnight job) Comodo announced another update, which I installed.

And guess what…..

Glad it worked out for you! I too use Comodo and that second, most recent update gave me a slight problem. When I restarted the system as requested, Win XP hung at the loading screen and sat and sat … I had to power OFF and re-fire to get back in. I haven’t found anything amiss so I hope it was just a passing glitch.

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