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Firefox performing *very* badly on T540P with Windows 8.1

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:17 pm
by ts1971
Hi,

I just recently took delivery of a new T540P with windows 8.1 pre-installed. Everything is working fine except for Firefox (which is version 31) which is working very, very not fine. Initially I thought that the problem was only an incompatibility with the yahoo mail application as that was the site that manifested the worst symptoms. Essentially after just a moment or two of using the application, the browser would effectively lock up. It wouldn't take any input and nor would it allow me to change windows. It would stay this way for several minutes at a time before I could even close it.

Finally, out of desperation, I switched to IE for just yahoo and thought that that was going to be a workable solution. And things and definitely better but after a couple of days I can say conclusively that the problem is not solved. It doesn't happen as often and it doesn't last as long, but Firefox still locks up ever several minutes of continuous use for at least a 45 seconds or a minute. Needless to say, this is frustrating.

When I look at the Task Manager I see a whole slew of Lenovo / Thinkpad processes and I'm guessing that maybe one of those must be the problem as I haven't added any software and it seems impossible that Firefox works *this* poorly with Windows 8.1. At this point, I'm about ready to just either ditch it for Linux or download the vanilla 8.1 distribution and install that. Before I do that though, I thought that I'd post a note to see if maybe this was a known issue with a known resolution.

Thanks and sorry for all of the rambling.

Re: Firefox performing *very* badly on T540P with Windows 8.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:06 am
by RealBlackStuff

Re: Firefox performing *very* badly on T540P with Windows 8.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:45 pm
by pianowizard
ts1971 wrote:it seems impossible that Firefox works *this* poorly with Windows 8.1.
Out of curiosity, I just installed Firefox 31 on my Dell OptiPlex 760 (which is much older than your T540p) running Windows 8.1. No problem whatsoever. A quick Google search also revealed no widespread complaints about using Firefox 31 on Windows 8/8.1.
ts1971 wrote:At this point, I'm about ready to just either ditch it for Linux or download the vanilla 8.1 distribution and install that.
These days, it's fashionable to blame problems on Windows 8/8.1. I agree with RealBlackStuff that avoiding Firefox would be a much more straightforward solution. My favorite combination is IE and Opera. Also, you paid for the Windows 8.1 install, so it doesn't seem smart to not take advantage of it.