Firefox is slow or completely hangs with 100% cpu usage

eno_on · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2005 Posts: 13

I am using Firefox 2.0.0.4 and find that it completely hangs on such sites as www.gentoo.org and www.slashdot.org (becomes totally unresponsive and utilizes 100% of my CPU). I have tested without loading any plugins and the problem persists. I am guessing that this might be a font issue, but I haven't found a solution. On a past Gentoo install on this computer Firefox had no such problems. I am using gnome 2.16 on Xorg 7.2. No real errors are reported in the console during the slowdown.

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

Run it through strace, you'll probably get a lot of output. Learning strace is a good idea if you haven't.

eno_on · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2005 Posts: 13

strace did not show any information when firefox slowed to a crawl with those sites

LostInGentoo · Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject:

I'm having the exact same trouble with my system.

If you leave the computer for a while site browser comes up alive again.

It happened to me after an upgrade earlier this week. I hadn't upgraded my system due to the fact, that I sould hand in my master thesis.

However. It's not only firefox that is terrible slow - it's also thunderbird. So something must be wrong.

I found out that Images seems to cause very much trouble. Showing an image can make the browser hang for a while. Mails in Thunderbird including graphics makes thunderbird react even slower. However just listing the mails can seem slow. It's very annoying!

Anybody that has found a solution is very welcome to submit one!

eno_on · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2005 Posts: 13

I just fixed my problem after switching "AccelMethod" to "XAA" instead of "EXA" (in xorg.conf). I am using the radeon driver on an ATI mobility 9000.