I am using Windows Vista. Whenever I launch Firefox 4, it takes a long time to start and appear on the screen.
What could be causing this slow start time and are there any solutions which can speed it up?
I am using Windows Vista. Whenever I launch Firefox 4, it takes a long time to start and appear on the screen.
What could be causing this slow start time and are there any solutions which can speed it up?
One of the main reasons (according to Mozilla) for slow Firefox startup times are addons. See this link, where Mozilla talks about this issue. Some results are posted here. There are some disputes about this, so the list is not as comprehensive as it should be.
As Xr, says try to disable some addons and see if it loads faster (though this will be difficult to do visually). There are also some hacks - Firefox Preloader and this - to speed up launch times, try them out.
Edit : I used the "About startup" addon to look at startup times, and the "startup.service" addon Christi suggested, and it really improved time measurably.
You could also try the Faster Firefox extension. Make sure that you reboot after installing and launch it from the desktop shortcut created by the extension.
CCleaner has options specifically for Firefox, including compacting its SQLite databases. I've found that after a few days of using Firefox, running CCleaner streamlines Firefox startup noticeably.
Try to disable all extensions and see if you still consider it slow. If it's not slow anymore, enable extensions one by one to find the culprit.
Most of the time, the addons are blameworthy of slow start. You can see the Slow Performing Add-ons list on the official Mozilla site.