# Firefox becomes unstable when I use multiple tabs



## Bittertooth (Apr 22, 2010)

Firefox works fine until I start having several tabs open at once, and then it starts to freeze for a few seconds every 5 seconds.  It usually happens once I get around 3 tabs open, but the freezing is more brief and subtle when I have just 2.  Closing the tabs doesn't reverse the freezing issue, it just keeps doing that until I restart firefox.

What do I need to do to fix firefox so that I can use multiple tabs without problems?  I uninstalled a bunch of add-ons I didn't need but that didn't make a difference.  Once I updated firefox to 3.5.9 it got worse and started becoming unstable earlier on in the session.

Edit: the OS being used is Windows Vista.
Edit 2: It actually takes about an hour for the freezing to kick in.


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## Night_Fangs (Apr 22, 2010)

Thats sounds like a very weird problem, I had something like that once but it fixed it simply by restarting firefox and clearing the cache. I keep anything from 40-60 tabs open at one time so I don't know why it would struggle with 3 unless you have a very old computer.


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## Bittertooth (Apr 22, 2010)

Night_Fangs said:


> Thats sounds like a very weird problem, I had something like that once but it fixed it simply by restarting firefox and clearing the cache. I keep anything from 40-60 tabs open at one time so I don't know why it would struggle with 3 unless you have a very old computer.


I have had the computer since August '09, so it's new.
To me, 40-60 tabs seems like a hell of a lot


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## Night_Fangs (Apr 22, 2010)

Hmm, Well in that case all I can suggest is restarting the computer and clearing the cache, Failing that reinstall FireFox, But reinstalling does not all ways work and might cause some other problem.

Just counted my open tabs, 71 of em.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 22, 2010)

40-60? Jesus, I find more then 6 destructing..


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## Night_Fangs (Apr 22, 2010)

The Drunken Ace said:


> 40-60? Jesus, I find more then 6 destructing..


That's almost nothing compared to right now with 71 tabs open, FF is using 307MB of memory and the associated svchost file is using 70mb of memory.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 22, 2010)

Why?


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## TreacleFox (Apr 22, 2010)

Trying to make a purchase on paypal with 40+ tabs crashs it rofl


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## Garreth (Apr 22, 2010)

The last 2 updates for FF have been buggy lately. I've been seeing a lot more errors with flash player occurring over the past updates.


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## ArielMT (Apr 22, 2010)

Start -> All Programs -> Mozilla Firefox -> Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode)

This starts Firefox with all extensions temporarily disabled.  Try to make it crash in the same way then.  If it still crashes, it's Firefox itself, but if it stops crashing, then it's one of the extensions or plug-ins you didn't uninstall that's causing it to crash.


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## SnowFox (Apr 22, 2010)

Since it's vaguely on topic I'll take this opportunity to ask:

Is it just me or is firefox terrible for completely locking up while a tab is loading? It might be my imagination but it seems to be getting worse as newer versions come out. It doesn't matter if I have 2 tabs or 50 tabs, the whole program is completely unresponsive until all the tabs have completely finished loading. It's got to the point where I can't stand to use firefox to browse this forum anymore because it's just so slow and frustrating to do anything.


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## Stratelier (Apr 22, 2010)

Bittertooth said:


> Once I updated firefox to 3.5.9 it starting becoming unstable earlier on in the session.


IIRC Firefox 3.5+ has known performance issues for tabs that contain multiple Flash objects, especially those using transparency.


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## Bacu (Apr 22, 2010)

Firefox? Unstable?

UNHEARD OF.


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## Scotty1700 (Apr 22, 2010)

Yeah believe it or not I betrayed The Fox and got chrome instead. I'm glad I did, chrome is sooo much better....but it doesn't have fox in its' name v_v


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## Bacu (Apr 22, 2010)

Scotty1700 said:


> Yeah believe it or not I betrayed The Fox and got chrome instead. I'm glad I did, chrome is sooo much better....but it doesn't have fox in its' name v_v


This is actually a perceivedly legitimate reason to use FF.
I actually use FF anyway, I don't like chrome all that much.


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