Firefox 52.9.0esr (Portable); anyone else seeing "script" problems?

[LoneCrusader]

I've been using Firefox 52.x.xesr Portable on my machine for over a year now. Suddenly, last night and today it has become unusable due to scripts hanging the system for several minutes at a time and eventually displaying an error message popup about it which gives me the option to Continue, Debug, or Stop the script. Stopping the script does not solve the problem in all cases, and as soon as one goes to another page or site it begins all over again. Even plain google.com with no other sites open and nothing logged in can trigger this.

When this happens the entire machine is slowed to less than a snail's pace. Even pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL does not produce the Task Manager immediately. Once you have it open, you can literally leave it up and watch the Status of the Firefox Application switch back and forth between "Running" and "Not Responding" as this issue comes and goes.

So, am I the only one having this issue? I haven't installed any new plugins or addons or otherwise changed the browser. I thought it might be a hardware issue until I switched back to PaleMoon 24.7.2 and everything is working fine there.

I find it very strange that this behavior is the exact same behavior one experiences if you try to use Windows 9x online now (or for the past few years) with say Firefox 2.0.0.20...

[rloew]

I have been seeing this intermittently with the regular 52.9.0 for months now. One Core appears to be maxed out. Sometimes killing the browser works, other times I may have to reboot.

[jumper]

Sounds like Google has "updated" their JSON (or other) APIs that so many sites blindly use. :(
If the page has a row of Social Networking buttons, it could be scripts from any of those sites. It may be time to update your Script Blocker or HOSTS settings. Let us know if you find anything new we might need to block. TIA!

Also: if the crypto was upgraded on any JS servers, decoding it might be taking (much) longer. A larger memory cache setting might prevent the re-decoding of some scripts. A (larger) file cache might also help (although that's less "portable").

[Mathwiz]

Come to think of it, I had a similar experience recently. I had to work on an old XP system that was in bad need of updating. One of the updates I performed was FF; I took it from version 26 up to 52.9.1 - and then I started experiencing freezes just as you describe.

Yet, my VM, which also runs XP and uses the Basilisk browser had no such issues. Basilisk is very similar to FF 52, so that didn't seem likely to account for the difference in performance.

But now that you mention Google, it occurs to me that my Basilisk installation is equipped with an armada of add-ons that block a lot of Googlebloat. Primarily for privacy, but I bet it also improves performance.

I'd probably start with uBlock Origin. I think you can install add-ons in a portable installation, although I haven't tried it myself.

[LoneCrusader]

Turns out that something is apparently wrong with my particular setup of Firefox Portable.

After examining the state of things on two other XP machines where Firefox 52.9.0esr was normally installed I verified the issue does not exist there.

I set up a copy of the Portable version on one of these systems and there were no apparent problems with it either.

Set up a second copy of the Portable version in a different folder on my main machine and it's working fine now as well.

Looks like something is seriously messed up with the previous copy. I don't want to lose my browser history and such so it looks like I'll have to try to figure out the problem or try to transplant the profile files or something along those lines. Been anticipating having to do this for a new system eventually but I have no experience with this. Never knew the value of all those old URL addresses (and specific file names) one accumulates until so many started going the way of the dinosaurs.

[sdfox7]

On 2/5/2019 at 11:23 PM, LoneCrusader said:

I've been using Firefox 52.x.xesr Portable on my machine for over a year now. Suddenly, last night and today it has become unusable due to scripts hanging the system for several minutes at a time and eventually displaying an error message popup about it which gives me the option to Continue, Debug, or Stop the script. Stopping the script does not solve the problem in all cases, and as soon as one goes to another page or site it begins all over again. Even plain google.com with no other sites open and nothing logged in can trigger this.

When this happens the entire machine is slowed to less than a snail's pace. Even pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL does not produce the Task Manager immediately. Once you have it open, you can literally leave it up and watch the Status of the Firefox Application switch back and forth between "Running" and "Not Responding" as this issue comes and goes.

So, am I the only one having this issue? I haven't installed any new plugins or addons or otherwise changed the browser. I thought it might be a hardware issue until I switched back to PaleMoon 24.7.2 and everything is working fine there.

I find it very strange that this behavior is the exact same behavior one experiences if you try to use Windows 9x online now (or for the past few years) with say Firefox 2.0.0.20...

@LoneCrusader

Have you tried the Firefox 52.9.1 (not .0) from my thread here? Mozilla Firefox 52.9.1 ESR Works on Windows XP

The installer is here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/tinderbox-builds/mozilla-esr52-win32/1536215521/firefox-52.9.1.en-US.win32.installer.exe and the "portable" zip is here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/tinderbox-builds/mozilla-esr52-win32/1536215521/firefox-52.9.1.en-US.win32.zip

[bluebolt]

2 hours ago, LoneCrusader said:

Looks like something is seriously messed up with the previous copy. I don't want to lose my browser history and such so it looks like I'll have to try to figure out the problem or try to transplant the profile files or something along those lines.

I wish I could relate, in order to lend a hand, but in my setup the browser history is scratched every time I close Firefox.  Or by "browser history and such" are you talking about your bookmarks?  Are you able to "Bookmarks / Show All Bookmarks / Backup / Restore" same, and transfer to a fresh install? 

[Dave-H]

Probably not related, but just thought I'd mention that I suddenly started having terrible javascript problems on FF 52.9 ESR just on Facebook, and it turned out that it was Adblock Plus causing it.
I disabled it on Facebook, and everything came good. I reported it to Adblock Plus, and got a reply that they had other reports of this and were working on it.
As I say, probably irrelevant, but the symptoms were pretty much as the OP described, but for me it appeared only to happen on Facebook.

[LoneCrusader]

Sorry it took me a few days to get back to this.

On 2/7/2019 at 12:08 AM, sdfox7 said:

@LoneCrusader

Have you tried the Firefox 52.9.1 (not .0) from my thread here? Mozilla Firefox 52.9.1 ESR Works on Windows XP

The installer is here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/tinderbox-builds/mozilla-esr52-win32/1536215521/firefox-52.9.1.en-US.win32.installer.exe and the "portable" zip is here: https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/tinderbox-builds/mozilla-esr52-win32/1536215521/firefox-52.9.1.en-US.win32.zip

I saved a copy of 52.9.1 for setup on new machines; however on this machine I'm running the PortableApps version. The "ZIP" edition from Mozilla is not 100% "portable" as I understand it (apparently it makes location specific registry entries?); maybe I'm wrong. Updating to 52.9.1 within the browser doesn't seem to be possible (this worked for the past few "publicized" releases).

I've not installed 52.9.xesr directly to this machine because I have an old copy of Firefox 3.6.28 installed that I sometimes (very rarely these days) use for specific purposes. When I set up a new machine or reinstall Windows this won't be present.

On 2/7/2019 at 2:23 AM, bluebolt said:

I wish I could relate, in order to lend a hand, but in my setup the browser history is scratched every time I close Firefox.  Or by "browser history and such" are you talking about your bookmarks?  Are you able to "Bookmarks / Show All Bookmarks / Backup / Restore" same, and transfer to a fresh install? 

No, I'm referring to browsing history. I use the PlainOldFavorites Addon so I don't use Bookmarks and I can simply backup the Favorites folder for these.

On 2/7/2019 at 2:40 PM, Dave-H said:

Probably not related, but just thought I'd mention that I suddenly started having terrible javascript problems on FF 52.9 ESR just on Facebook, and it turned out that it was Adblock Plus causing it.
I disabled it on Facebook, and everything came good. I reported it to Adblock Plus, and got a reply that they had other reports of this and were working on it.
As I say, probably irrelevant, but the symptoms were pretty much as the OP described, but for me it appeared only to happen on Facebook.

I disabled AdBlock Plus to see if it might be a factor. No change in behavior with the messed up installation.
 

Then disabled all Addons, still no change. Looks like the problem lies elsewhere.

If I disable my Internet connection the "bad" Firefox loads but sits idly with the page cannot be displayed message. If I reconnect it, Firefox returns to the previous behavior. Even trying to access the about:config page with only Google loaded leads to an indefinite hang. I'm beginning to suspect some type of "malware" but nothing else seems to be affected at all.