Internet connection problems - Firefox 3.5

[Avastfan1]

Dear Forum,

Has anybody noticed the intermittent internet connection problems with Firefox 3.5?

I have established the following:
- It is not my ISP as other computers on the same connection run perfectly with Opera and Safari
- My system is clean (Avast boot-time scan, MBAM scan, SAS scan, HJT analysis, Dr. Web all show nothing)
- I have disabled all add-ons (eg. Noscript, Adblockplus, ZA Pro's privacy settings) to no avail
- Used Crap Cleaner and Firefox's settings to clear all cache

The problem seems to be that some websites won't load. However hitting reload tends to load them.

I noticed people experiencing similar problems in this thread: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=46648.0

Would be extremely keen to hear your views and thoughts!

Best regards,

Avastfan1

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My setup:

Window$ XP Pro SP3 (fully patched)
Firefox 3.5
Avast Pro 4.8.1335
ZA Pro 8.0.400.02
MBAM Pro 1.38 (resident protection module)
SAS 4.26.1006 (on-demand)
Spybot 1.6.2.46 (on-demand)
Hijackthis 2.0.2 (on-demand)

[micky77]

have you checked your firewall settings for firefox ?

[.: L' arc :.]

 Are you using the beta edition before and automatically upgraded to the final version..? Consider downloading the final version from Mozilla.

[.: L' arc :.]

 This can also help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2462

[Avastfan1]

Dear Forum,

ZA Pro is configured correctly for Firefox (Green tick under Access for Trusted and Internet).

I was not using the beta version. I upgraded via the internal upgrade function normally without any errors.

I don't really know what that addon is supposed to do.

Thank you for the suggestions. Does anybody have any other comments or ideas?

Avastfan1

[bob3160]

I've also had lousy speed out of Firefox 3.5  even if it's supposed to be faster.

[MikeBCda]

I'd been having a connection problem with 3.5 that's probably not the same as yours but might be related.  After upgrading to the final release (from 3.1-point-whatever), I found that at a great many sites, I'd get a very long (10 secs or more) "looking up ..." followed by an equally long "waiting for ...", and often also slow "downloading data ...".  I'm on a good DSL/PPPoE connection, so naturally this was a pain.

And I was (and am) certain that the problem lay within the new Firefox rather than in bad DNS connections or elsewhere "out here", since if I gritted my teeth and tried with IE-8 instead, that went smooth as silk.

I posted this over at the Firefox forums, and one of the mods suggested I try building a new profile and see if that helped.  My 3.1 had been set to auto-detect proxies, mainly because I wasn't clear on just how "transparent" avast's proxy is and I didn't want to run into problems with that, but I found that changing to no proxy (or direct connection, or however it's worded in FF) made a considerable improvement.

My son's guess is that something was changed in FF 3.5 which considerably slows down proxy lookup when that's necessary.  Oh, and I've had the anti-phishing features and the new private browsing thing turned off all along, so I wouldn't think they'd be a factor.

[DavidR]

I'm having no problems with 3.5 (lucky) and page loads for me are noticeably faster. My only problem at the moment is my ISP, difficulty getting a dial-up connection, difficult getting a good connection speed and constant connection failures.

This has been going on for a while now before firefox 3.5 and really nothing related to FF, but when I get a half decent connection and I really notice the faster page loading.

[bob3160]

My son's guess is that something was changed in FF 3.5 which considerably slows down proxy lookup when that's necessary.  Oh, and I've had the anti-phishing features and the new private browsing thing turned off all along, so I wouldn't think they'd be a factor.

The link in the notice from avast that this thread was updated required the use of the F5 key to refresh the link.
It happens with most links in my email notifications.

[Sammo]

Has anybody noticed the intermittent internet connection problems with Firefox 3.5?

I read that FF 3.5 has a known Scriptmonkey problem that causes similar problems. Mozilla supposedly will be releasing an update in a few days.

You might get some improvement if you set the Firefox HTTP Proxy to 127.0.0.1 port 12080

[Avastfan1]

Dear Forum,

Thank you all for the input.

It was not the speed of the websites which was the problem. Indeed I, like DavidR also noticed a significant increase in loading times.

Rather the problem was the intermittent connection to websites. I already have the Firefox proxy configured for the '12080' Avast proxy as per the Avast website instructions.

Perhaps this new update relating to the Scriptmonkey issue will fix it.

Glad to see that other people are also experiencing this issue :-)

Avastfan1

[Tarq57]

I have the same (or very similar) problem since "upgrading" to 3.5 from 3.1, initially everything worked well, and page loading appeared faster. Then intermittent connection issues in both Thunderbird (which was updated a very few days beforehand, also) and Firefox.
That is; no connection, for up to half a minute at a time. Sometimes not at all. Closing the browser and re-opening it usually works. Reloading the page sometimes works. Happens on all sites, randomly.
Waiting somewhat impatiently for the fix as mentioned by Sammo.

[Lisandro]

I'm still with FF 3.1.
My browser experience (means, the addons) were severally punished by FF 3.5.
I'm waiting to upgrade.

[Tarq57]

How did you go back to 3.1?
Did you keep the installer for that version?

[Lisandro]

How did you go back to 3.1?
Did you keep the installer for that version?

You can find in English in FileHippo site.
I've downloaded from a non-updated server few minutes after 3.5 release as I had deleted the old setup.