What could be causing slow browsing in Firefox 8.0.1 and how can it be improved?

[rahulkhajuria]

I recently downloaded & installed Firefox 8.0.1 on 2 Windows XP Pro Sp3 p.c.s - One in my Office & the other at home . It seems to be running great on the Office p.c. (This one has Norton 360 installed on it & fewer Start-up Programs ) . However , on the home p.c. , (which has Avast (Free) & Comodo Firewall (Free) installed plus quite a few Programs that get loaded on Start-up) , it takes anywhere between 10 seconds to about 2 minutes for pages or links on pages to load . Sometimes , a link on a page will not open even after waiting for 5 minutes . Even , the
Linkscanner of Avast doesn't seem to be running correctly in Firefox .

I uninstalled firefox 8.0.1 with Revo uninstaller & then reinstalled it , but still the same thing happens .
Next , I tried running firefox after disabling Avast &
Comodo Firewall (both together) but still the same thing . Even , after running Firefox in Mozilla Safe mode the same thing happens .

However , If I start the Home P.C. in Windows Safe Mode or Windows Safe Mode with Networking , firefox loads everything very, very fast , almost instantaneously .

The plugins enabled on the 2 p.c.s are :-

Office p.c :-
.
1 .Adobe Acrobat 10.1.1.33
2. Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.290.11
3. Java (TM) Platform SE 6.0.290.11
4. Microsoft DRM 9.0.0.3250
5. Shockwave Flash 11.1.102.55
6. Shockwave for Director 11.6.3.633
7. Windows Media Player
Plugin Dynamic Link Library 3.0.2.628

Home p.c. :-

1 . Adobe Acrobat 10.1.1.33
2. Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.290.11
3. Java (TM) Platform SE 6.0.290.11
4. Microsoft DRM 9.0.0.4503
5. Shockwave Flash 11.0.1.152
6. Shockwave for Director Not installed
7. Windows Media Player
Plugin Dynamic Link Library 3.0.2.629

However , I don't think the problem is significantly linked to Firerox plugins because even after disabling all of them on the home p.c. , firefox runs in the same slow way & pages or links take a bit of a time to open .

I haven't seen whether the same thing happens if I use firefox 3.6.xx . However , I would be mentally more comfortable if I could troubleshoot & use the latest version of Firefox . (I always prefer using latest versions for all software ) .

And , since I am on the topic , apart from wanting to know the solution for the above question , I'd also like to know how to make my Firefox MOST EFFECTIVE & how to use it to browse seamlessly , troublelessly & with the best possible speed & ease on the Internet .(Basically , how to streamline it into an invincible & flawless browsing MONSTER !)

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Honestly then I would try to roll back to FF7. FF8 just added more features without much performance gain.