Firefox incredibly slow to open

Help for v2
#1

Hi,

I have recently installed CFP. Now, whenever Yahoo Messenger shows that I have new email messages and I click on the email icon for Firefox to open, it takes minutes (no exaggeration) to open. Sometimes even when trying to start Firefox by clicking on the Firefox shortcut on my desktop, again it takes ages to start. Any ideas what could be wrong?

Many thanks.
S.

#2

Regarding Comodo Firewall and Mozilla Firefox, I am experiencing a similar issue. In my case it’s cmdagent.exe that’s the culprit, spiking CPU usage to 100% any time a webpage is loaded.

Configuration:

  • AMD64 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 80GB HD
  • MS Windows XP SP2 with all patches
  • Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4.18.184
  • Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.5
  • Logged in as admin
  • Yes, I have custom rules for some server processes (e.g., TFTP, FTP, HTTP/S, etc.)
  • only other security software running is F-Prot AV v6.0.7.1
  • Network connection is via an Intel Pro-1000 GT adapter configured with 2 VLANs (thus 2 NICs in essence), one for a private network for testing and another on a public IP. Connection is 100Mbps full-duplex to a Cisco switch, which end result heads out of our site on dual OC12 connections. In short, my connection speed to the Net isn’t an issue. For reference, did some broadband speed tests to a server in our machine room and with Comodo in place saw throughput of ~90Mbps each way. Impressive. Comodo also dealt with the multi-NIC setup just fine, and other than this issue, has been a joy to use.

I cannot honestly remember if this began with the update to Firefox 2.0.0.5 or not, but I can say unequivocally that Firefox now appears to trigger some kind of issue with Comodo.

Specifically, I have various groups of bookmarks that I open “all in new tabs” each day. Some groups may contain 15-20 bookmarks, and in the past I never noticed this issue with Comodo. NOTE: I have only been running Comodo for about a month. But lately doing so has been excruciatingly slow, and a quick look at the Task Manager shows that Comodo’s CPU usage spikes to 100% and stays there for awhile.

If I open only a single page, things are reasonably ok, though at times even that appears to cause Comodo’s CPU usage to spike and response times to be slower than normal. This was not the case for the first few weeks of usage that I can recall.

I’m not sure if this has to do with an application (Mozilla Firefox) updating itself in place (which happened last week with Firefox 2.0.0.5 was released) and somehow Comodo had issues when it saw and updated its application database, or whether it’s something else.

One other observation is that when I make any changes to the ‘Application Monitor’, such as collapsing 2 rules (e.g., one for TCP/UDP Outand another for TCP/UDP In) to one (TCP/UDP In/Out), Comodo’s GUI seems to take quite awhile to refresh the window. This reminds me of how Kerio Personal Firewall 2.1.5 used to do similar when you edited the rules in that firewall.

Anyway, if there’s anything I can do to help track this down, please let me know, as this was the first firewall to get me to stop using Kerio Personal Firewall v2.1.5 (hard to beat its RAM footprint, but it was really showing its age), and I really like what you all have done with Comodo. Keep up the good work.

P.S. I have not noticed this sort of slowdown when doing file shares or other activities thus far. I have tried selecting the ‘skip parent check’ radio button on the Firefox app, but to no avail.