If I have Firefox sans profile on my hard drive, and the whole thing on my USB drive, and use the HD Fx to use the USB profile, would I see an improvement in performance?
And I know I'd have to modify the launcher to accept absolute file paths. 
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Most of the slowness is due to the profile reading/writing. It would speed up your initial launchtime a bit, but that's about it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
What about the slowness of opening a new window?
Vintage!
Do you, by any chance, have any crash recovery extensions installed in FFP? Opening a new window shouldn't take that long. It's slower than opening a new tab (even on a locally installed FF), but it shouldn't take that long unless you're using a crash recovery extension. This is why such extensions are discouraged when using Firefox Portable.
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< ExplosivePrincess 1.5 Atomic Bomb Edition >
warning: keep explosiveprincess away from children
It's set only to recover a crash. It's not set to load automatically or save a regular session. It didn't think it would slow me down much. I'll browse a bit with it disabled completely and see what a difference it makes. Even Fx windows (e.g. options), are slow to appear.
Vintage!
It's been said many times on the forums... anything with sessions or crash recovery writes to the drive on every page load, every new tab and every new window. Writes bog down all other operations from USB flash drives. So using something like this will slow down your Firefox experience significantly.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I find that crash recovery isn't really needed. I don't open that many tabs at once, and even when I do, I can usually find the pages I was surfing pretty easily in case of a crash by going into history and sorting by last visited (turning on write caching for the drive actually enables you to turn on history without slowdown).
Besides the fact, Firefox is pretty stable. I think I've only ever seen FF crash 3 times in the two years I've been using it, and I couldn't reproduce any of them, so I'm guessing they were flukes.
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< ExplosivePrincess 1.5 Atomic Bomb Edition >
warning: keep explosiveprincess away from children
New windows are still slow. It's not the session manager. 10-15 seconds to open a new blank window (homepage is about:blank). I'll modify the launcher and test my idea. I may even come up with a cool launcher that allows the user to specify paths either absolutely or relative to the variables.
Vintage!
The issue is with an extension or something with your profile. I can create new windows within Firefox Portable in well under a second on my Lexar FireFly (an average speed drive). Give it a shot with all your extensions disabled and see what you get. Then re-enable them and figure out which one is causing your issue. I'm guessing an extension... though it could be corruption on the drive or in the profile... but it's usually an extension. Please let us know which one it is when you figure it out.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Is it possible to disable an extension without uninstalling it?
Right click on the extension and click Disable
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Haha! That's so simple I may just jump out of a window now!
Self-defenestration is not fun.
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< ExplosivePrincess 1.5 Atomic Bomb Edition >
warning: keep explosiveprincess away from children
Have any ideas to narrow it down? I'll be using a local installation for this because it's much faster to start up (I'll be doing that a lot as you can see).
http://www.madhatt.com/~bahamut/MyConfig-Firefox.html
BTW, it's much easier to run in safe mode than to disable all extensions.
Vintage!
is admitting you have a problem.
You're on your own in determining which extensions it is. (You have a bunch I've never even heard of before) Generally things that save sessions or have any kind of crash recovery are the worst. Sometimes, some bookmark and history ones can cause things as well. In your case, it could simply be the sheer number of extensions that have to initialize when you launch a new window. Luckily, in Firefox, you don't normally need to open a new window.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Reminderfox and Forecastfox Enchanced slow down initial startup.
My guess is that there are so many extensions that use the status bar (16). Web Search Pro may also hurt the time because it has to replace the regular search bar. I was thinking of uninstalling it anyway because I don't use it.
I set Tab Mix Plus to force JavaScript popups into tabs. That should help me a lot because they make up most of the new windows I have. I uninstalled WSP and reduced FFE's display on the status bar to the radar and current conditions. I've also set Reminderfox to stop displaying alerts, but I don't know if that will be reset when I close Fx.
Luckily, in Firefox, you don't normally need to open a new window.
I would've gone insane a while ago if I had to open windows like IE.
Vintage!
If you've got forcast fox displaying only current conditions why don't you get rid of it and just look out of the window?
Why would I look outside when I have Firefox?
Vintage!
Or if you live in a 5 metre thick concrete basement
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I just discovered it was slowing FFP down a lot. Among it's other wonderful features, Tab Mix Plus saves sessions and closed tabs, both of which would slow down new tabs or windows significantly.
the session saving features don't play nice portably.
----
R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I've established that TMP's session manager, at least with my current settings, is NOT the problem.
Vintage!
I have no idea then.
----
R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."