Windows Security & Slow Internet Browsing with Firefox: Possible Causes and Solutions

Update:

This post has become #1 on Google for "slow Internet browsing 2008" and #15 for "slow Internet browsing".

If your Internet browsing is going slower than you think it should be I suggest that you try some of the Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware tools in my post "Good Free Windows Security Tools" to make sure you have nothing nasty on your PC. In addition, I recommend trying a different web browser and adding more RAM to your PC


Note: This is a somewhat rough collection of information.

Update: I failed to fix the problem on a second visit to my friend's house. I hope to try to reproduce the problem in a virtual machine on my PC (but it will be hard since I have high latency satellite Internet).

I plan to try using a local DNS cache to see if that fixes Firefox's slowness. If not, I think the addition of Spyblaster and Zone Alarm should make the PC reasonably secure despite IE7 being used as the primary browser.



I am investigating possible causes of Firefox 3.0.4 loading pages such as Ebay and Gmail much slower than IE 7 on a cable roadrunner connection in Alabama. AVG 8 is installed and the Link Scanner is disabled. Spybot Search and Destroy is installed and running the update may have installed the resident shield parts of Firefox.



New List of Things to try:

• Local DNS Cache: TreeWalk
  
  


• Disabling anti-phishing checking:



• However, It's probably best to keep enabled since



• I haven't seen it suggested much and it helps defend against things like this: [Phish] McDonald's survey scam is super-size fraud


• http://www.findmysoft.com/news/Google-The-Recent-Gmail-Issue-Not-a-Vulnerability-just-Phishing/ "If you are using Firefox 3.0.4, make sure that the adequate security options are active: “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected attack site”, “Tell me if the site I’m visiting is a suspected forgery”."
  
  




• How to disable it: Topic: Speeding up Firefox



• "To help people identify Phishing sites, forgeries (phorgeries?) and general
  
  ickiness, FF3 contacts Google.com for EVERY http request. EVERY REQUEST.
  
  
  
  And then it saves the results into 'urlclassifier3.sqlite' in your profile.
  
  
  
  This file grew to more than 50MB, at which point I read that you could
  
  'vacuum' it using 'sqlite3' to drop the unused database entries. I did this,
  
  it shrank to 33MB, a savings of 17MB... but the thrashing continued.
  
  
  
  If you will disable the Google checks, then exit FF3 and delete the
  
  'urlclassifier3.sqlite' file from your profile, your FF3 experience will be
  
  much nicer, albeit at the expense of some assistance in Phish Site Phinding."
  
  

Things I tried:

• One of the first things suggested is to try a new Firefox Profile with default cookie settings (the one used in this case was old). See: Creating a new Firefox profile on Windows - MozillaZine Knowledge Base:



• Seemed to help at first.
  
  




• Disable IPv6



• Didn't fix the problem of sometimes 1 minute load times of Gmail login page vs a few seconds for IE.
  
  

Things that can be tried but might cause problems (I tried them):

• Often suggested to speed up browsing for broadband users:
  
  



• Changing network connection defaults
  
  



• Firefox 3 beta 5: How many connections is too many?


• Tweak Network 1.3



• "Tweak Network will speed up the loading of web pages and increase the maximum number of simultaneous downloads from a site. "


• "This is probably the greatest Firefox add-on ever to come out! It has boosted my surfing speeds greatly, and I am sure that Firefox is now faster than Opera, Chrome, and even Safari!"
  
  




• Enabling network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining. "Users who want better page loading speed can try setting this preference to true, keeping in mind this may break some websites."



• What people say:



• How To Speed Up Firefox (Helpful Vanity) "I always thought Firefox was a little slow loading pages, but was willing to live with it due to the extra security it offers. Doing what I posted makes Firefox as fast as IE, if not faster. "




• Often suggested if you have a fast processor:
  
  



• Setting nglayout.initialpaint.delay and Content.notify.interval to lower values


• 
  
  

Possible causes:

• Spybot S and D


• Update: Spybot immunization was not enabled, so it shouldn't have been a Spybot S and D issue.
  
  


• Note: I installed Spybot S and D and ran updated which may have installed extra features of Spybot S and D.
  
  



• Firefox very slow for last week
  
  "Spybot's Firefox immunization will insert entries into your profile folder's "hostperm.1" file.
  
  ... I just disabled the Spybot Firefox immunization, and restarted Firefox. Problem solved."



• Possible fix: Spybot update (4-16) causing issue with SpywareBlaster "undoing/disabling immunization for Firefox in Spybot S & D - to prevent Spybot from writing these invalid entries to the file"




• DNS Issue (I think this may be the issue).
  
  



• http://www.ukparentslounge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=77263
  
  


• Firefox uses different DNS settings than IE:



• "Firefox caches DNS lookups for 1 minute"


• "Internet Explorer caches DNS lookups for 30 minutes by default"


• developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html


• Increase FF caching to 30 minutes seemed to help, but it seems that new windows and restarting FF made problem reappear. Could it simply be that DNS cache is cleared on browser restart?
  
  




• Proxy issue



• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html However, this would likely affect IE also.
  
  

People with similar problems:

• General problems:



• http://forevergeek.com/open_source/fixing_firefox_slow_downs.php



• "when I open a new tab and go to gmail or microsoft, or something it simply hangs, for minutes on end. The tab gets the loading icon (rotating circle of dots), as if it was trying to load the page, but nothing happens. The page times out (error: The connection was reset), or sometimes it loads eventually, if you wait like at least 5 minutes. Opening the same link in IE is rocket fast (so its down to the browser, not my connection)."


• "still takes too long. about 1 minute to load anything. its always "waiting for"so-and-so a site, or "transferring data" from a site. it never used to be like this."


• "All was well. Today, a tech formatted and reinstalled Windows and I installed Firefox. Put in the usual options. Facebook took 62 seconds to load one page. Most sites have 'waiting for' in the status bar. Tried pipelining options, disabling certain parts of AVG, etc. as other sites have advised, to no avail. CPU usage for Firefox 3 appears abnormally high (80–97 per cent) in some cases."




• Problems with Ebay and Firefox
  
  



• Firefox 3 works awful with eBay listings page The issue I'm having with Firefox 3 and eBay is that it is taking forever to load when before it was fairly quick. I've had it take 3-4 minutes to load a page, and sometimes, it won't load completely or just gets stuck. I've nothing wrong with my cable modem and every other page I go to loads normally at a normal speed.
  
  


• General Ebay and Firefox problems: firefox and Ebay • mozillaZine Forums
  
  

Is it ok to use just Win XP SP3 + AVG 8 + XP Firewall + IE7?

• I've always thought no.


• And I think I'll stick by that no.


• Zone Alarm should be used:


• "The built in windows firewall is only half a firewall as it will not block unwanted out going connections. zonealarm is a much better piece of software." (Use Built-in SP2 Firewall or ZoneAlarm?)
  
  



• "The question is "is the Windows Firewall sufficient" though? The bottom line answer is "no". The Windows Firewall is much better than its Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) predecessor, but still no match for a 3rd-party personal firewall solution such as ZoneAlarm." (Windows XP SP2 Firewall: Is It Sufficient To Replace 3rd-party Personal Firewalls?)
  
  



• SpywareBlaster should be used.
  
  


• Windows Defender might also be useful, but AVG has built in anti-spyware and using Spybot S&D and SpywareBlaster should negate the need for Windows Defender.


• Some people think so: Is AVG av and windows firewall enough?
  
  


• Computer Talk: AVG free 08: "If you're running Windows (any flavor), and you're not behind a router, and you're on a highspeed connection, you really should be behind a firewall. Windows has open ports by default. You don't need to be surfing websites for someone to be able to access your insecure machine."
  
  


• Is Windows Firewall sufficient enough? Avast? "IMO, if my PCs locked down, I don't have any viruses on my PC to begin with, so I don't need to worry about outgoing connections, although this is just my opinion, others disagree."


• 
  
  

  I agree that Windows Firewall is enough - CNET Community Newsletter: Q&A Forums "If you don't mind your details being sent out or your machine being used as a DoS slave etc then thats fine and your choice, but please don't advise people to do the same. The windows firewall is as effective a firewall as a piece of paper is to fire"

  
  
  

  
  
  

What is a good free anti-spyware application?





SpywareBlaster seems to be well-liked and people say it doesn't consume a lot of system resources. See how to use it here: Elijah Lofgren's Blog: Maintaining your PC's Security with Free Anti-Virus, Firewall, and Anti-Spyware Software.





What is a good free firewall?

• ZoneAlarm vs Comodo
  
  



• "So far, so good! It's replacing Comodo!"



• "I tried Comodo - another popular free firewall - and it never properly learned my computer or programs. It was constantly making me approve everything 4 or 5 times each and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't take it anymore."



• Note: I've had the same problem with Comodo having many alerts.
  
  

What about other Anti-Virus Software?





Conclusion: If I find problems with AVG 8, I think I'll try avast! then Avira in that order.





AVG vs Norton?

"AVG AntiVirus - Personally, I’ve found this to be the fastest running of all Anti-Virus Programs and its free too. From my experience, Norton AntiVirus is the most bloated AV client ever. And those Internet Protection Packages are also just as bad." (9 Steps to Speed up Your PC « Jatex’s Weblog:)

Is an email scanner needed?

• Computer Talk: AVG free 08: "The AVG email scanner is a redundant waste of resources. If you're running the resident scanner, there's no need for the email scanner."



• Hmm.. This puts Avira back in the running.
  
  

• AVAST!



• It sounds good, but complaints about slowness make me not want to install it on slower PCs: avast! Home Edition - Reviews


• 
  
  
  
  
  Is Windows Firewall sufficient enough? Avast? "I dumped Norton because, like most on here, it seems to slow the computer down etc. In turn i installed AVAST which found several infected files straight away - cheers Norton! It seems a good program so far....any opinions?"
  
  


• Some good things said about avast! on I agree that Windows Firewall is enough - CNET Community Newsletter: Q&A Forums :
  
  



• There are good free security suites (e.g. Avast does just about everything that it does well) and bad commercial security suites (e.g. Norton's consumer version is a resource hog of questionable reliability)."


• "As a self confessed 'propeller head' and an industry professional for over 30 years, I've tried dozens of different utilities and nowdays always prefer the free products... I use Avast antivirus and have not been struck once, and have used it for my clients to clean serious virus where others could not (virus' look for potential commercial versions and know to avoid them!).

What about browsers other than Firefox?



Trying Google Chrome or Opera instead of IE or FF is not an option since there are problems listing items on Ebay: Standard editing is not available in Chrome, only HTML why ?