Issues with Firefox and Thunderbird

I've been having a lot of stability problems with both these programs lately.

Frequently, they'll freeze on startup; it's not uncommon for their windows to never open. Or, they might freeze from simply from normal use. More irritating is that for some reason, -I cannot end their processes in the task manager-. If I try to open them multiple times, there will be multiple Firefox.exe's and Thunderbird.exe's; I can end the duplicates, but the original processes will not end. I don't get any messages saying they can't end, I just click "End Process", and then "OK", but they just keep running. I've tried reinstalling, but it doesn't help.

Has anyone else been having any problems, or know what I can do to fix this?

 

I had that problem with my xp machine for a while. It was a virus. I'd recommend a massive full scan of your machine.

 

I really doubt it's a virus. I'm running a fresh install of Vista, and I always run AVG.

 

Could be a problem with extensions (Firefox)
check the list http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions

I had similar issues a month or so ago on my (old) latop (runs XP) and ended up running through their recommended diagnosis
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox

Creating a new profile seemed to solve my problems
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

I didn't get too concerned when I stated having some issues because when I checked around I found others that had recently started having problems

If you haven't updated to Firefox 2.0.0.8
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0.0.8/releasenotes/

it might help!

Susan

 

first and easiest thing to try is simply reinstalling or uninstalling/reinstalling the apps.

 

I did mention that I have a fresh install of Vista; hence it follows I'm running new versions of the software. Well, I'm actually running an older version of FF at the momoment; I switched back to see the problem was still present, and it is. I've tried reinstalling before, though.

I'll try going through the diagonist, though.

 

It couldn't hurt to do a virus check. Just try it.

 

Although you have identified only TB and FF as victims here, I suspect that the problem is far more systemic.

I would look at several things, at the Vista/System level:

• Indexing - Do you have all drives indexed? Did it ever complete? Do you really need all drives indexed?
• Recover points/Shadow copies - Eats up a lot of disk space and cycles.
• Unneeded STARTUP and Task Scheduler items

You might install CCleaner and see what it finds. As already stated, I believe this is a Vista issue, or rather, Vista implementation issues.

 

The weird thing is, that this was happening to me under XP Pro as well. I thought it might go away under Vista, but the change hasn't helped. At first I thought that I was having trouble ending processes in general, but it seems that firefox and thunderbird are the only two that really give me trouble (though they're the only things that seem to be frequently freezing up, so I haven't really had much experience seeing if other processes will refuse to end when they're not responding).

- My HD is indexed. I believe this is the default setting. Should I keep it indexed, or what?
- As of now I only have one system restore point listed.
- I'm not sure what I would be looking for, here. I haven't really messed with either of these on this installation. I could disable unnecessary startup items if needed. I've never really used the Task scheduler so I don't know what I would need to change there.

 

Based on this statement, I would need to know what other programs you have installed.

 

Alright. Let's see...yeah, I probably had the same set of programs installed under XP as well. Do you think it's a conflict of some sort with another program that I have installed? Also, I just ran CCleaner, fixed registry errors, cleaned unneeded files. Haven't used it in a while, nice little program that I'd forgotten about.

My installed programs:

http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/2576/55624626gp4.png

EDIT:

For what it's worth, I did a virus scan. I'm clean.

 

Sorry to go off topic on you but, I noticed you have Java 6 update 2 and 3 while I have J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 updates 5 and 7. Does anyone know if it's necessary to have both, and can I safely delete update 5?

 

Vagabondllama: You have a number of programs installed I do not recognize and quite honestly do not have the time to research. This certainly does not look like a fresh install of Vista to me.

Hiker: I only have Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 6 installed.

 

Yeah, no problem. I didn't expect you to.

It is a "fresh" install, in the sense that I've only had it for a couple days. I just know every program that I use and I install them all straight away.

Not all of these programs are involved, though, because I installed Firefox fairly immediately on and I've had the problem from the start.

 

Just a hunch, based on my gut: Try uninstalling the KTP Ware drivers and using either the native Windows drivers or even the Synaptics drivers. Your problems feel like they are close to the hardware.

 

Yeah. A little more research found this. Is Java Updates needed? Their grammar, not mine!

 

Ah yes, no child left behind. After all, "Childrens do learn".

 

Hello Vagabondllama,

this thread's kinda old now, but I have just the same problem with my new notebook running WinVista. Have you found a solution yet? I find it quite annoying to have to restart the machine just because I cannot kill the Thunderbird process.

Best,

Naclador

 

Vista SP1 RC ...try it ..improves crashes.....errr i mean reduces crashes

 

Thank you, nocturnal310,

that lets me hope, but I think I'll wait for the final version of SP1 to save me from install-uninstall-install mess.

Thanks again.

 

I've been running Vista Home Premium (without installing the pre-release of SP1) since June 2007 full-time and using Thunderbird and Firefox exclusively without any problems such as these at all.