Firefox Still Crashes on Me

[Deano!]

Well, about a year ago I was disappointed when Firefox kept freezing or crashing so I tried Opera and found it was stable, quick and had a lot of good features. The only weak area of Opera is it's downloading ability - it can't handle multiple downloads as well as Firefox. I also heard that Firefox now has a video downloader.

So, since a year had passed, and I thought they must have fixed it up by now, I tried the latest version of Firefox and found that the video downloader was no better than any old free thing you can get for any browser. What's more, the bloody thing still freezes on me. At least it hasn't "encountered a problem and needs to close" yet, but it loves just sitting there for ages trying to download common pages that IE or Opera can fetch in a few seconds.

Anyone else having this problem with Firefox? I mean I'll just go back to Opera but I'm curious why Firefox continue to be hugely popular when it's crap.

I'm using Windows XP by the way.

[Twingo]

Have you tried disabling any additional add-ons you may have installed for it?

Firefox does tend to use more memory than other browsers so it could also be that your memory isnt stable, you could try running memtest just to confirm it, i doubt it is this, but its worth a shot. Other than that, the only thing i can think of is either a poorly designed site (which ever is crashing it)or something with your OS install that it doesnt like.

I don't think my firefox has crashed in the last year at all.

[Deano!]

Twingo - thanks for the advice.

I set it up with no add-ons at first, then only added it's video downloader.

I haven't got the Memtest program, but I tried downloading common pages on Opera first, then immediately swapping over to Firefox to try opening the same page (with Opera now closed) and found it couldn't open some of them. It took ages to open others even after I'd switched back to my homepage and tried opening them again.

Perhaps I'll give it another go in a few years time.

[Floydoid]

Try doing a complete uninstall of Firefox, then re-installing it.

I'd recommend Revo Uninstallar

[Deano!]

This was a fresh install from scratch this morning. I had removed the old Firefox about a year ago. I didn't get any messages about it "uninstalling version xxxxx" or anything while it was installing this time.

I did a bit of a search on the web (using Opera!) and found that some people just have a rotten time with Firefox. It must be a certain combination of hardware and other programs that Firefox clashes with. I can live without it.

[Sam Slater]

Have you tried google chrome?

Good selection of add-ons these days and I think it's the best of the main 4 browsers.

[MegaTon]

I agree google chrome is pretty good

[Deano!]

I haven't tried Chrome for over a year - but I might give it another go to see if it's got more features that I like. Thanks.