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#1
Firefox issues- sudden total PC freezing
I've been using Firefox for years without any problems- however, the past few days I've started having issues. My PC locked up totally a couple days ago, unresponsive, requiring I pull the power cord to shut down. CTRL+ALT+DEL did nothing, couldn't click anything, power button did not respond. After a reboot I went in and deactivated a few useless pluging(Windows activation which I no longer need, Silverlight which I think Windows Update installed, couple others). I'd also previously decreased the browser cache to 75 MB, and decided to increase it back up to 512. Shortly after that, restarting th browser, things got a bit sluggish with my PC but it cleared up so I assume Firefox was busy doing stuff.
Tonight it did this again upon starting Firefox, the only other open program was Notepad. Same thing, had to unplug just to reboot.
I want to use Firefox. I dislike IE and while I just installed Opera, it's not got as many features- NoScript is FF exclusive and the Opera equivalent isn't as nice. I found Java issues- namely, the MapleStory website doesn't properly work in Opera. However, I can't use it if it's going to lock up the computer.
I've all but ruled out malware. 99% certain I'm clean. Beyond running Adblock Plus and NoScript I've run scans with Malwarebytes, Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot, SUPERAntiSpyware and tonight I checked with Ad Aware. Nothing. So unless I have some super malware that is dodging every detection attempt then I'm clean, and I've not seen any major funny signs or obvious symptoms(no Google redirects, no popups, no programs in task manager that shouldn't be there).
And the only recent change was a batch of "important" Windows 7 updates on the 15th, and my first lockup was on the 16th. Could these updates have done anything to compromise Firefox's stability?
I haven't updated Firefox in a while, since I saw no need. Could that somehow be causing this, or conflicting with Windows updates? I left a couple plugins going, but the fact it locked up on a fresh browser start makes me suspect it's not that. Likewise, I've seen suggested to use FF's browser reset, but I'm curious if that'll solve this.
Hardware issue... could I have a hard drive or CPU going bad? Doesn't seem like it since this seems like a Firefox issue but never know...
Could Spybot's immunizations of Firefox be at fault somehow? While I generally doubt it, I'll mention it regardless. I did update them recently, though before Windows Update ran on the 15th.
Last edited by Diosoth; 20 May 2013 at 01:32.