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flea, this is a complete stab in the dark, but is your XP system up to date with service packs and updates?
Also, what version of Firefox? I think newer versions should be better for your problem.
Oh, this is fun (for me, anyway) - when Firefox is slow, try opening the Windows Task Manager (Do a Ctl-Alt-Del, then click "Task Manager") and look for anything weird. Click on the Processes tag and see how much CPU Firefox is using. Then click on some stuff on Firefox and check Firefox's CPU usage again. This will tell you if it's really Firefox that's slow, or if something else is going on.
You might try using the Flashblock add-on. I found that some web pages that use a lot of Flash (even for ads) can slow things down.
I just upgraded to Firefox 3.6.9 (I was at 3.6.6 I think) so I hope that will help.
I don't have any control over XP patches - that is something IT controls, and supposedly keeps up to date, but I have no idea. (I don't have admin rights.)
I have 48 processes. Is that normal? The only one using more memory than Firefox is Rtvscan.exe, which seems to have to do with a Symantec virus scan thing. Is that supposed to be so huge?
48 processes is not out of line. Symantec definitely can slow things down pretty significantly. Do you have enough access to shut down and restart the virus software?
If it's happening at the same time every day and it looks like a scan, it might be that there is a virus scan scheduled to automatically go once a day. Maybe it's supposed to run at midnight and is running at lunchtime instead?
Firefox (like most browsers) will use a lot of memory. it's CPU usage I'm interested in. a browser may use a lot of cpu while a page loads, but the cpu % should drop to near 0 after that (unless there' Flash, animation, etc.)
It looks like other users have had similar problems; the program in question hangs up when it's looking for a particular file and can't find it. But the solution may be beyond your purview; i.e., registry edits. You may consider asking your IT to look at this.
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Hmm Norton can be very aggressive about running what it calls "idle time" scans. "Idle Time" apparently being nortonspeak for "because I want to."
I can open up the Symantec program, but it doesn't show me any scheduled scans and doesn't appear to be running, from that viewpoint. I can't terminate that process from the task manager (tried and it would not let me) so maybe it is an IT behind the scenes thing?
Ok, go back and answer tommy's question about CPU usage; he's correct in that stuff that just takes up a lot of memory isn't necessarily bogging you down. He wants to see what is actually using the cpu.
