Pale Moon slowing down Topic is solved

[TheBear64]

I have been a Pale Moon user for several years now, and was always happy with it until fairly recently. I was initially attracted to it because it was much faster and more simplified than Firefox. Lately however, I have been experiencing significant slowdowns in my browsing experience. I have tried newer versions of Firefox and they don't seem to have these same issues. Unfortunately I am still turned off with Firefox due to their war with Adobe and stubborn lack of support for flash video. I don't want to jump through hoops to get simple video on my news sites to work, only to find that they work poorly on top of all that.

I don't know why I am having these issues. While I am not an IT professional, I do know my way around my computers fairly well, and I always keep my systems clean of malware and know how to tweak my computer's settings to maximize performance. The problems seem to be slow loading pages, pausing while scrolling down certain pages, and even of late I have noticed that sometimes Pale Moon seems to be slowing down my whole system, causing other programs to slow down as well, a situation which seems to resolve itself once I close Pale Moon.

I would like to continue to use Pale Moon. I have tried many other browsers, and I like Pale Moon the best, however if this situation gets much worse, then I will have no choice but to use another browser.

My system specs are:

Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core 2.2Ghz
RAM: 4 GB
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Pale Moon Version: 27.6.1 (32bit) (Would I be better off with the 64 bit version?)

Thanks.

[hobbledehoy899]

I just have to know, is it only Pale Moon that's slowing down or are other applications slowing down as well?

[TheBear64]

Initially it seems to be just Pale Moon slowing down, but I noticed that if I leave two or three pages open it gets worse with time, then other applicartions also start to slow down, As I said, if I then close all instances of Pale Moon, then the problem seems to resolve itself.

I have also noticed similar problems on my computer at work, which is an Intel i7 system with 8GB of ram, also running Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

[Pallid Planetoid]

For me Pale Moon is still the fastest browser, refer to post: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17387#p127388.

[TheBear64]

I have tried some newer versions of Firefox and they seem faster. Also Google Chrome is significantly faster than both Firefox and Pale Moon. I have also been frustrated with the lack of a good popup blocker for newer versions of Pale Moon. AdBlock Plus used to work great with older versions of Pale Moon, but it no longer works at all with Pale Moon. I am running Ad Blocker for Firefox 11+ 0.7.7.1 right now. It works, but not too well... lots of stuff still gets by. By contrast, Chrome's popup blocker does a phenominal job.

I'd have to say that right now, Google Chrome is kicking most everyone's butt. I'm not crazy about their interface though and some of the default settings that it gives you. I wish Pale Moon was more competitive with it for speed and popup blocking, but I feel that it's falling behind,

[Thehandyman1957]

Interesting, I am running W7 64 bit with 8 gigs of ram and a 1gig Nvidia card and have not experienced any of the issues you are
experiencing and I have a boat load of add on's. I also use many programs on the side while running PM and have not noticed any other slow
downs anywhere.

Have you tried using a new profile to see if the issue subsides? Perhaps you have a bad add on acting up?
I'm sure there are many folks here who can help you with this and figure out what might be causing your problems.

As for an add blocker, I use Adblock Latitude 4.0.1 and uBlock Origin 1.14.10 and between them
I almost never see any ads.

Also, did you start with a new profile when you upgraded to PM 27?
You cannot take a profile from 26 to 27 without having issues.

Hopefully we can help you figure this out. What kind of video card do you have?

[Pallid Planetoid]

I have tried some newer versions of Firefox and they seem faster. Also Google Chrome is significantly faster than both Firefox and Pale Moon. I have also been frustrated with the lack of a good popup blocker for newer versions of Pale Moon. AdBlock Plus used to work great with older versions of Pale Moon, but it no longer works at all with Pale Moon. I am running Ad Blocker for Firefox 11+ 0.7.7.1 right now. It works, but not too well... lots of stuff still gets by. By contrast, Chrome's popup blocker does a phenominal job.

I'd have to say that right now, Google Chrome is kicking most everyone's butt. I'm not crazy about their interface though and some of the default settings that it gives you. I wish Pale Moon was more competitive with it for speed and popup blocking, but I feel that it's falling behind,

Use the Ad Blockers on the Pale Moon add-on site: https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/. as you can see there are several Adblock Latitude, ABPrime and uBlock Origin to name three. I would highly recommend uBlock Origin myself.

As to speed, there are many factors that impact browser speed that for a true comparison have to all be equal which is what I've done, so if you want an apples to apples comparison I've posted as such HERE.

[betties]

Yep. I'm using Ublock origin too. It does a great job. I like that you can select other annoying things on a page to block than just ads with it... like blinking & over-sized banners, or huge side bars with pointless info that I don't care about.

PM seems pretty fast for me on a quad core with W7. But if I've been online for a while surfing a lot, it does start to bog down, so I have to close all browser windows & restart it. But I have that same problem with every browser I used. They all seem to bog down after you've been using them a long time, & need to be re-started.

[Pallid Planetoid]

.... But if I've been online for a while surfing a lot, it does start to bog down, so I have to close all browser windows & restart it. But I have that same problem with every browser I used. They all seem to bog down after you've been using them a long time, & need to be re-started.

Yep, that's true, you could alternately clear cache which will help some if you tend to not shutdown your computer that often. (in Pale Moon you can do this in "Options" > "Advanced" > "Network" tab in the Cached Web Content section, but reboots always help the most as far as quickening things up).

[TheBear64]

Have you tried using a new profile to see if the issue subsides? Perhaps you have a bad add on acting up? I'm sure there are many folks here who can help you with this and figure out what might be causing your problems.

Seems like a lot of work, having to redo all my settings (I like it set up quite differently from the default settings) and re-install all my plugins. I tried backing up my profile folder, refreshing Pale Moon, then copying back the profile folder. All the settings and plugins came back that way, but I'm not sure if it will make a difference. I'll try it for a few days, and maybe try it in safe mode as well, and if it doesn't seem better, maybe I'll try a fresh profile on the weekend when I have some time to fiddle with it.

As for an add blocker, I use Adblock Latitude 4.0.1 and uBlock Origin 1.14.10 and between them I almost never see any ads.

I tried adding both of those. It does seem better than the old popup blocker I had, but on at least two sites that I frequent, popups still get through, whereas when I try those same sites and same links on Chrome, it does a much better job at blocking the popups.

Hopefully we can help you figure this out. What kind of video card do you have?

NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT. I tried upgrading it to a GeForce GTX660 2GB, but I might have run into power issues with that card. That's another weekend project I guess, to see if I can get that working.

[Thehandyman1957]

Seems like a lot of work, having to redo all my settings (I like it set up quite differently from the default settings) and re-install all my plugins. I tried backing up my profile folder, refreshing Pale Moon, then copying back the profile folder. All the settings and plugins came back that way, but I'm not sure if it will make a difference. I'll try it for a few days, and maybe try it in safe mode as well, and if it doesn't seem better, maybe I'll try a fresh profile on the weekend when I have some time to fiddle with it.

You don't have to lose your old profile, just create a new one next to it and see how it does. If it still gives you
the same problems then we'll have to try something different and you can simply go back to your original profile.

I use ProfileSwitcher 1.7.6.1 to make it easier. But then when you use the new profile it won't be there.
But you can always tell PM to ask what profile you want to use until you get it straightened out.

[Pallid Planetoid]

TheBear64 - if you did a "Refresh Pale Moon" (clicked on that button in about:support) then you have a fresh profile as a result (as I understand it).

If you enter "palemoon.exe -p" without quotes in the Windows "Search programs and files" box this will allow you to start the Profile Manager by clicking on your search results where you can create an additional clean Profile to use to test in the Profile Manager interface (using this method you can always enter the same thing in the "Search programs and files" box and return to your default [original] Profile any time you want which remains available any time).