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Firefox Portable completely unusable. Keeps freezing entire computer.

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gaveitatry
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Firefox Portable completely unusable. Keeps freezing entire computer.

This is a brand new laptop with great specs. The vast majority of my programs are on my older laptop, and I only use this new laptop for the bare essentials. So no chances of viruses, etc. I only have simple programs like Notepad++. So it seems too often, most of the time, just opening a new tab in Firefox Portable will cause the browser to not respond. And then normally one could move the mouse cursor around and go to another window or go to Task Manager and force quit the Firefox Portable exe. But I can't even do that, because the entire laptop will freeze forcing me to force shutdown and restart the laptop. I'm exasperated. I use Firefox Portable more than other program. I can't keep dealing with this. I'll probably try to do a fresh install later (even though I just did one like a week ago). Just really disappointed.

John T. Haller
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Drive?

What drive do you have it on? If portable, which USB port (2 or 3) and do you have the same issues when using it on another computer?

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

gaveitatry
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So, I didn't reinstall

So, I didn't reinstall PortableApps.com Platform. But I did backup my Firefox Portable profile and then uninstall Firefox Portable. And then, instead of launching PortableApps.com Platform from my USB Drive, I launched it from the symbolic link folder and installed Firefox Portable that way. Not sure if that makes a difference, but I do know if I launch PortableApps.com Platform from my USB Drive, I can't pin the program to the taskbar. But if I launch it from the symbolic link folder, it lets me pin the program to the taskbar. So I'm hoping by installing Firefox Portable through the symbolic link folder, it might have helped or fixed some things. And then I restored my profile folder. It's way too early to tell if my browser is working again. I need to give it a week or two of regular use to see. Because I've barely used it in the last day. I'll keep you posted. If it's working, I'll let you know. If it's not working, I'll let you know. But right now, I won't follow up on this thread for another 1-2 weeks. As for my other computer, that Firefox Portable is installed on an actual hard drive instead of a removable device and I rarely use it. I just visit one or two websites on it. I didn't feel like running any tests on that computer.

John T. Haller
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Drive

That sounds like a drive issue. Make sure you have cache disabled (it slows down use on a flash drive), check your drive for errors, and run CrystalDiskMark to ensure that your drive is fast enough to handle running apps.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

gaveitatry
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I don't think that it was a

I don't think that it was a drive issue. I've been using the same USB Drive with Firefox Portable for 6-12 months. Never had problems running apps from it. Of course, maybe the drive is suddenly failing on me. But I don't think that is the case. I don't think that it has anything to do with cache either. Because I've been using cache for the same duration of time and never had a problem with the browser not responding or my computer freezing. Also, one can change location of the cache to the C:/ drive if they want. They just need to go to about:config, type browser.cache.disk.parent_directory, and then change the path. I've had it set to C:/ but after this recent new installation the cache is being stored on my USB Drive and I'm not noticing any problems. It's only been a day or two, so maybe it will act up later. I haven't really been using the internet all that much. But it does appear to be working now. Which is a relief. Thanks for your theories, but I don't think any of them match what was going on.

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