I fire up my browser this morning with about 20 tabs open, and suddenly it’s like I’m in the dialup days. Every new site I try to open is taking a minute to load. Rebooted the modem and router and all that jazz.
DSL’s speed test run on Edge shows everything running nominally, but meanwhile I can’t get it to even open in Firefox, and speedtest.net craps out with a latency error.
OS is Windows 10, Comcast internet over 250 Mbps down, etc. Firefox 72.0.2.
Everything is as normal for me. AFAIK there hasn’t been an update in a couple of weeks.
Could it be some obscure hardware issue?
Are you on wifi? My USB wifi adapter sometimes slows down for no reason as far as I can tell.
Nah, it’s a wired connection to my desktop.
Finally I rebooted the PC and that seems to have fixed the problem more or less. Maybe it was a “memory leak” (not a programmer, but I gather programs become useless after a while when that applies)?
Nothing wrong with Firefox. Appears to be something in your session of Windows. Sometimes though (I haven’t experienced it once with v72) if a browser process has hung in the background it treats the next launch as your last session crashed. Did you open process explorer/task monitor to see how many Firefox processes were running or not responding?
Do you have any mitm-ing security/firewall software installed like malwarebytes (or any/every brand really these days) that could be breaking connectivity just to that exe?
But definitely open task manager next time and check your processes before you suspect any one specific thing.
Thanks, all, for the replies.
I do run Malwarebytes Pro, and it’s registered in the security center so its real-time protection (in theory, anyway) is not conflicting with Windows Defender’s.
I did not check the Processes tab in Task Manager, and I’m definitely slapping my forehead about not thinking to do that.
In troubleshooting, disable the web protection next time or shut it down completely to test your Firefox.
I did actually do that (the Web Protection part) but it didn’t help, and of course Malwarebytes complained. Also, once I’d done that I couldn’t seem to open Malwarebytes again to change it back.
The not reopening afterwards is a tip-off that MBAM was misbehaving in handling its web protection.
But then why didn’t Edge have similar problems? Because it’s not the default browser? I mean, it’s accessing the web just the same.
Because MBAM inserts itself at the application/software layer to do its Web inspection and its very job is to selectively block/allow Internet access to programs. The Internet itself at the hardware layer via your Internet provider modem/router was not discriminating between apps as the Internet access to the computer overall was not the problem.
The default browser flag had nothing to do with the problem only that they were 2 different browser apps that MBAM enforces access to. It had fucked up on only one of them.
Different browsers handle MitM certificate installation differently too. AdGuard Pro which has “browser protection” as well generates a certificate error for all HTTPS in only Firefox sites after installation whereas non-Chromium Edge and Chrome don’t even complain. Fixing this Firefox quirk requires reinstalling the Web protection just to satisfy Firefox.
https://kb.adguard.com/en/windows/solving-problems/connection-not-trusted