533606 - Browser Startup hangs some tabs for minutes.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Cor'e]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Whenever we start FF (Since version 3.x i think) some of the Tabs hang with the little spinners showing only.  Refresh does little or nothing.  Network activity is nill.  It takes too much time to load all the Tabs whether ~10 or ~50 tabs, it does not care which Tabs, it appears random which Tabs and how many, usually ~10%-15% of them won't load on StartUp.

I cannot figure out why no one has reported this issue since it has been happening since version 3.  Our users run Tabbed Browsing and use the Global password feature.  If it is extension related we have not noticed.

It is like it runs out of resources, we have over 3GB RAM per system, and it happens on all installs for every user we have - so that's about 40 differing configs.  It appears to effect only a small portion of the Tabs, but it is really annoying as it takes literally several minutes to finally load those Tabs so normal browsing can start.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start up in Tabbed Browsing.
2.Have about 15-60 Tabs.
3.Wait until all Tab spinners stop.

Actual Results:  
4.Takes too much time.
5.Network activity stops for minutes.

Expected Results:  
4.Takes less time.
5.Network activity never stops till ALL Tabs are loaded.

Since we see this every time we install FF3 on WinXP SP3 (maybe SP2 did this too, we forget...) we have a hard time understanding why this has not been fixed.  It is one of the reasons we're looking into a different browser to use, but honestly every browser has defects like this.  We're investing FF3 atm so we're reporting this to see if it can be patched and allow us to enjoy FF3.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

do you see this with newest firefox 3.6, and versions of flash, etc with firefox started in safe mode? http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 2

[Cor'e]

YES, i have seen it and suffered for years, what's up with this??  I suspect the pages that require me to enter my FF master password are the problem, which i have many many many...

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'd be surprised if the problem(s) you see, if they are bugs, aren't already reported in other bugs. That said, your report is still too general - it needs to be reduced to a small testcase with enough information that *others* can reproduce ...

>  It appears to effect only a small portion of the Tabs

So you will want to identify exactly which tabs and their URLs...
And ensure it is not extension (remove them all) or flash related (install the flashblock add-on)...

And it will better to use a 4.0 beta build http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/ because v4 has lots of improvements and fixes.

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.