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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?

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  • What do you mean by a long time? Could you grab a stop-watch and time it for us? We can then compare that to how long it takes us to start it and we can get a good comparison.
    – Majenko
    Apr 15, 2011 at 9:08
  • it takes atleast 40 to 50 seconds
    – Praveen
    Apr 15, 2011 at 9:16
  • related: superuser.com/questions/25223/…
    – studiohack
    Apr 16, 2011 at 19:39

5 Answers 5

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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.

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  • Good software, sad thing it's OLD. 2005 is the last release date. But seriously.. why there is no way to preload it or something? :( I even use a RAMDISK just for firefox. grr.
    – Apache
    Apr 16, 2011 at 19:49
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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.

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  • +1. It seems to work. THe site said no re-boot necessary. I re-booted from my usual shortcut and it came up much faster. Thanks.
    – Xavierjazz
    Apr 15, 2011 at 16:53
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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.

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  • 1
    @Gareth: I see that you removed my mention of CCleaner's original name, CrapCleaner. I included it because the original name is more descriptive and many people (including myself) still refer to it that way. According to the developer, the name was changed so that people would not be offended, but I've always suspected that Microsoft objected the loudest.
    – boot13
    Apr 15, 2011 at 18:20
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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.

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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.

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