Make Firefox load faster

39 responses so far ↓

• naveen // Sep 27, 2007 at 4:28 pm

  When I open Mozilla I find a pop msg saying “I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE”
  I am unable to open orkut in my computer eitherin IE or in Firefox. A msg pops up saying orkut is banned you fool…………..what should I do plzz help me.

• David Bradley // Sep 27, 2007 at 5:08 pm

  naveen the “I DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE” is caused by a computer infection! You caught the W32.USBWorm. A quick fix can be found here. Good luck.

  db

• dpelia // Oct 10, 2007 at 9:09 pm

  uh..it didn’t work on my computer…..

• David Bradley // Oct 11, 2007 at 7:31 am

  I should have said, as with all tweaks of this nature, “you’re mileage may vary”.

• dunn // Nov 22, 2007 at 4:35 pm

  i’m a little bit confused. is that mean that after i download Fasterfox i still have to download Firefox Preloader, or i just choose one?

• David Bradley // Nov 23, 2007 at 7:37 am

  You can use both, one pre-fetches pages the other is a GUI for FF speed tweaks.

• Zac // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:37 pm

  Whats the last tweak for?

• David Bradley // Apr 3, 2008 at 9:08 pm

  Zac, I thought I said in the post. It’s to release memory when you minimize Firefox, which can be quite useful if you don’t want to close the browser.

  db

• Arniceous // Apr 27, 2008 at 4:35 am

  Tweaked my dad’s system with all the about about:config settings. Works Great! Thanks =)

• David Bradley // Apr 27, 2008 at 10:08 am

  Glad things worked out Arniceous. If you also used the memory dump on minimize tip and occasionally minimize Firefox it will work even smoother

  db

• Imran // Apr 30, 2008 at 10:07 pm

  I have a weird problem. My browsers (IE and Firefox) both have a delayed response. That means to say, after typing the URL it takes some time for the pages to start appearing. Even a simple google search takes a good 30 seconds plus! This cannot be attributed to my connection speed because http://www.speedtest.net reports that my connection download speed is greater than 7000Kb/s and upload speed is greater than 450Kb/s. Is there anything that I can do to improve this. It just started acting this way a couple of days ago. I have NOD32 and Zone Alarm installed. Tried disabling both of them. Still not improving.

  Please help!

  Thanks

• David Bradley // May 1, 2008 at 7:30 am

  Imran, while your speedtest results sound impressive, I’m pretty sure that the test doesn’t use an http connection to do the download and so is nt necessarily reflecting accurately the connection speed you have to the web, but rather measures a file download.

  When you say there is a delay do you mean that the page begins to load but takes a long time to complete, or does nothing start for 30 seconds? If the former then it is more than likely a connection speed issue. If the latter then I would suggest your ISP’s DNS is not working properly. Try OpenDNS

  Come back and let us know how you get on

  db

• Imran // May 1, 2008 at 3:18 pm

  Hi David,

  Well it doesn’t respond for sometime (it varies from time to time) and then the page loads in a flash!!! That’s another reason why I thought it cannot be attributed to connection speed.
  Well I am not sure about the techniques used at http://www.speedtest.net but Virgin Media (my ISP) is charging me for a 10Mbps connection.

  Like I said, it just started few days ago. Before that, it worked like lightning. As per your advice let me try using OpenDNS to see if it works. If there is anything else you want me try, please let me know.

  Thanks once again.

  Cheers!

• David Bradley // May 2, 2008 at 8:15 am

  Yeah, I’m paying for a Virgin connection too, that is often slower than it should be, I think they cover their backs in the T&Cs but I suspect the UK regulator OfCom will step unto the breach some time soon and clamp down on poor speeds.

  Anyway, back to your problem, you say it’s more about a delay before a page displays, that is odd.

  However, you could try this

  Type “about:config” into the address bar without the quotes, hit enter/return.

  Now, right-click anywhere in the window and select New –> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” (no quotes) and set its value to zero. That should stop any painting delay.

  Let us know…

  db

• Imran // May 2, 2008 at 7:22 pm

  Hi David,

  Tried that, but it still hasnt really changed anything. I also wanted to add that this is not a firefox specific problem because IE and Safari too have the same kind of delayed response.

  Initially, I was suspecting if it was my firewall but disabling that also doesnt solve the problem. I installed Adware and Spybot S&D and scanned the machine. It dint come up with any suspected malware/spyware.

  Is there anything else that you might think worth trying before I really get frustrated with this computer and go for a format and reinstallation of OS???

  Do let me know…

  Cheers..

• David Bradley // May 2, 2008 at 7:34 pm

  In the words of Kate Bush, as sung to Peter Gabriel, “Don’t give up…please…don’t give up”.

  Certainly, don’t opt for the format and OS reinstallation malarkey that’s the default help desk response…there has to be something simple we’ve overlooked. Have you ever run and MTU tweaker? If yes, it could be that, if not, find one and give it a try.

  db

• Imran // May 2, 2008 at 10:00 pm

  No I havent. Could you tell me which is the best MTU Tweaker that I could download?

  I really hope this fixes the issue. Its really starting to affect my work.

  Imran

• David Bradley // May 3, 2008 at 1:20 pm

  Try this one Imran

  http://www.freshdevices.com/tweak_fix_settings.html

  db

• Michael // Jul 4, 2008 at 3:13 am

  Using FasterFox is very bad manners. It preloads a LOT of pages, most of which you will never view. Thus it increases the Internet traffic you create many times over. If everyone did this, the Internet would come to a crawl.

  Using FasterFox is taking a “me me me” attitude. Of course, most people don’t realize this. Still, I wonder how many would not use if they did.

  PS: I like this font you’re using. Looking through the CSS, it seems to be “Georgia.” It’s very readable. I should trying playing with more body fonts myself.

• David Bradley // Jul 4, 2008 at 7:39 am

  Point taken Michael, personally I don’t use FasterFox. I wonder, however, whether there might be a way to tie in pre-fetching with a kind of bit torrent type system so that we all pre-fetch and cache each other’s pages…oh wait a minute…security alert…

  Glad you like the font, yes, it’s easy design for one’s own machine, but not every system will have Georgia, so this site may look slightly different to other people from what you and I see.

• Vandavenom // Oct 14, 2008 at 3:25 am

  Imran, If you’re still around try this one as well,

  http://www.f2v.net/how-to-make-firefox-even-faster-307.html

• Aziku // Nov 30, 2008 at 6:59 am

  Yea, how do you open the clipboard?

• matt // May 3, 2009 at 2:43 pm

  i run Firefox ver 3.0.9 and the about:config entry called browser.cache.disk.capacity is not there. Is it obsolete or should i add it?

• Tricky Tahmid // May 24, 2009 at 5:38 am

  Try my ultimate trick. It takes 2 seconds to load on my pc. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize. Then click the ‘show’ drop-down menu and select ‘text’. It is the icons that makes FF load slower. If you disable it, it’ll take so much less time to load.

• David Bradley // May 26, 2009 at 11:44 am

  Interesting…I’ll give it a try.

• matt // May 26, 2009 at 5:32 pm

  I have yet to find anything that actually works I think the preloader does nothing as it takes the same time to load FireFox and just slows down my system startup IMO it does more bad than good.

• Nicole // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:43 am

  I have less than 512mb of RAM (448mb) what should I set the value of browser.cache.disk.capacity to?

• David Bradley // Jun 19, 2009 at 7:25 am

  Nicole…how have you managed to get a system with less 448Mb of RAM? These days doesn’t RAM come in absolute minimum chunk sizes of 128Mb or 256Mb RAM? Before I’d worry about speeding up Firefox I’d check your RAM is functioning properly and perhaps think about replacing those old memory chips with a bigger chunk of RAM.

• matt // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:02 pm

  its easy to have a system with 448 mb ram it means you actually have 512 but your shared video card on your laptop is taking the memory. I have a laptop and my video takes 128 mb of my 2 gb which puts me at an odd number too.

  I do agree 512 is not enough memory anymore, you can deal with it sure. The thing is though with the ram prices at what they are its easy to get a gig or so esp if its an older machine.

  To answer Nicole I would still set it at 15000 and if that doesn’t do anything set it at 10000 but with only 512 mb ram i don’t think you will see any change.

  I think this computer needs to be formatted and have windows reinstalled and maybe think about using Linux like Ubuntu or something as Linux can revive older systems as it can run well on computers made before ’95.

  I am running a an old laptop too (i consider a laptop old in like 3-4 years mine is about 4) It has a 2 Ghz processer a 128 meg shared mem video 2gb memory.

  Anyone who has not done this before or have not done this within the last year I suggest you Format and re-install windows asap. just think of it as a tune up or oil change or something you need to do it from time to time or else your computer will slow significantly.

  Windows is easily bloated from using it. your temp folders fill your hard drive. Your system registry get bloated with old unused information. In all windows has never fixed this problem as it should not have a Registry system at all. If windows released a Linux Distro It would be the Best Operating system out thier as *Nix systems are so stable and run so well and the only reason we run windows is because there is a lack of software and because it is a good gaming platform for daily computer use its *Nix all the way.

• David Bradley // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:30 pm

  Ah, okay. I getcha. So, we’re talking available RAM…that’s different. I’d just treat is as if it were 512Mb for any tweaks, the shared video chunk will take what it needs as and when presumably…

• David Bradley // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:34 pm

  Great advice re backing up, reformatting and reinstalling, always worth doing to speed up almost any tardy machine

• Sue // Aug 3, 2009 at 1:00 am

  This is amazing. After the tweaks, Firefox starts up much faster. Thanks and I’ll help spread the word.

• Kevin // Nov 2, 2009 at 5:02 pm

  This was great information. My Firefox loads very fast now! I only have one problem that seems to have come from these changes. Before when I closed Firefox with several tabs open they would reopen the next time. Now when I open it I only get one tab open with my home page. I would prefer to have the tabs that I was working on before remain there.

  I’m not sure which of the changes did this but is it possible to make this adjustment back to the way it was? I followed all the suggested tips including adjusting the RAM in about:config.

  Thank you.

• David Bradley // Nov 2, 2009 at 5:10 pm

  I don’t think any of the suggested changes would have affected that. Check session restore settings.

• Aaron // Mar 11, 2010 at 11:45 pm

  It worked for me

• Michael // Mar 14, 2010 at 4:38 am

  I tried some of the changes listed here (not FasterFox, of course) and my made FF run MUCH faster. I only have 512 MB of RAM on my Mac (OS X Tiger) and a slower broadband connection (to save money).

  The Web suffers from Wirth’s Law. Web pages are now usually 10 times as big as they need to be. Mostly because of Javascript (which is often 90% of a web page), so if you disable Javascript for most sites by using NoScript, they’ll load much faster.

  (Yes, you’ll still get the JS that’s embedded in the HTML, but most of the JS is in external JS files.)

  You can also use FlashBlock, so that Flash videos will not be downloaded and run unless you explicitly ask for them by clicking on a button that replaces the Flash object.

  Or you can just uninstall Flash entirely.

  Also, very few web designers know how to use CSS the right way, making it much too big.

• Vincent // May 30, 2010 at 2:21 pm

  I used the about:config tweaks and FF started faster but still is relay slow.
  It takes 48 sec to start.
  Then I set of the update of FF, Adons and search: 35 sec.
  This was first time startup after reboot.
  Startup without boot take 15 sec.

  First time startup should take only 15 sec, restart should take only max 2 sec.

  Thank you for your tips
  Vincent

• Michael // Jun 13, 2010 at 4:32 am

  Everyone once in a while, you’ve just got to give up and exit your browser and re-open it — and don’t re-open all of the tabs, though even if you, you’ll still usually use less RAM.

  If you don’t want to lose the pages, just use “bookmark all tabs” in the bookmarks menu. Name it with the date.

• Rod // Jul 18, 2010 at 6:22 am

  You know what would be great, if someone could create a reg file or some form of file that we could open with FF that would install these tweaks with a single click. Great post by the way, the tips work like a charm.