Firefox slow to close.

Don't know if this is anything to do with the 'bloat' complained of in
another thread but I notice Firefox it hanging on in my cpu for quite a time
after I have supposedly shut it. As this is on an old Inspiron 2600 without
a lot of memory to spare I wonder if there is anything wrong, and if there
is anything I can do to speed Firefoxes shutdown. (Can't win: I swapped
from Internet Explorer because it took forever to open!

I have XP Home, all up to date; Avast; Tea Timer; and a hosts file.

The slowness seems to have coincided with me noticing 'interrupts' taking up
loads of the cpu too.
No idea what to do about those either.

Cheers for any useful tips.

S

 

A. In my own experience, problems with Firefox not closing
are usually caused by a misbehaving plug-in which is not
shutting down quickly.

Try this

1. Close all but one Firefox tab & window.
2. Set the remaining tab/window to a blank page by going to the URL
about:blank
That URL is just about:blank and not http://about:blank
3. Now close Firefox.

Does Firefox shut down quickly after this?


B. If you start Firefox in Firefox's "Safe Mode", does the
problem still occur?
Start menu >> Programs >> Mozilla Firefox >> Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)

Can you tell us which version of Firefox are you using?

What identified this as 'interrupts'?
Real "interrupts" probably means some hardware device and/or the
hardware device's driver is responsible.

 

Thanks Ralph:

I do have Firefox (3.6.10) set to 'show a blank page'; which shows as
'about:blank' as the 'home page' and '(untitled)' on the tab itself. Rather
confusing that they have three different names for the same thing: and now
you tell me there is and actual URL of that name too!

Why can't I have a blank page without going to any URL? (It was this that
made me change to Firefox. When IE8 was set to 'about blank' it just shows
a tab saying 'connecting' for ages, so I don't use it.)

Before doing any serious browsing today, I've opened and closed a few times,
with just the blank, and then with the BBC site, and it has made a liar of
me by closing straight away! Thus it seems it may be something which
accumulates with the length of time the browser is open and in use.

The interrupts are shown in Microsoft's Process Explorer. Unfortunately it
lumps them all together and there seems to be no way of identifying the
process or hardware device responsible. I did ask a question about it on
the xp.general forum:
<http://groups.google.com/group/micr...nk=gst&q=interrupts++spamlet#1220c0d7490d7aba>

But, as you can read, it developed into a technical discussion that was over
my head, and left me still unable to know how to identify the problem.

I notice that, searching for my thread on interrupts, Google has turned up
more, so I will have a look at them too. I did, recently fit a new WD hard
drive, and it seemed to be very fast after that for a while.

Coincidentally, or not, I only noticed the interrupts after I had deleted
Microsoft Update and returned to Windows Update, because it had been that
process which took up most of the processor for a long time. Now the
interrupts can take up most of the processor instead. Just can't win!

Thanks very much for your interest.

S

 

Thanks to your prompting Ralph, I had a wider read on interrupts threads and
discovered the settings of the IDE channels:

Taking the suggestions together I found that my IDE channels seemed to have
got mixed up somehow. The primary one was set to 'DMA if available' but was
running as PIO. The secondary one was on 'Ultra DMA Mode 2'.

When I uninstalled the primary and restarted, the 'found new hardware' pop
up came up. And on restarting again, the hard drive had been installed on
the primary and was then set on 'Ultra DMA Mode 5' (!?). - which I'd never
heard of.

When I did the same trick for the secondary channel, it reset itself to
POI - both 'if available' and 'currently'. However, reselecting 'DMA if
available', after a few minutes it reset itself to 'currently' 'Multi-Word
DMA Mode 2'. Which I also have no idea what it means. I though it was just
POI or DMA, dot all these different sorts of DMA!

(I have to say, I have no idea what is meant by these various modes.)

So it looks like both controllers had got mixed up, and I never would have
found this out without your help asking what I meant by interrupts.

I still notice interrupts, but so far they have only gone up to around 2%

So fingers crossed: things may be fixed.

Many thanks,

Spamlet.

 

Yes, I think we established that (bit by bit) thanks Brian.

The hard part is *noticing* that the setting has reverted, and then finding
out how to get it back.
If I had not been using Process Explorer routinely, and, if I had not had
the - common - problem with slow MS Updates and then noticed the 'interrupt
storms' this was masking, and then found Firefox was slow to close and asked
about that; I would never even have heard of DMA or PIO and the tendency of
XP to revert to the old PIOs. Then I would not have solved the problem with
slow to open email... which has gone since resetting the IDE controllers.

Anyone not using PE would probably never even hear about interrupts and
their significance. I've been reading the news groups for a number of years
and have heard next to nothing about them before.

Anyhow, I'm very pleased to know about interrupts; DMA and PIO now, and I
hope that in future, people looking for reasons their computers may be
running slow, are routinely advised to do this simple check on their IDE
settings: it can make drastic improvements at one stroke!

Cheers,

S