Thread: Firefox hanging
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Old August 13th 18, 04:58 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
No_Name
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Default Firefox hanging

On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 22:15:01 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

wrote:

On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 21:37:55 -0400, Paul
wrote:

wrote:
On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 19:48:03 -0400, Paul
wrote:

wrote:
This started yesterday. Firefox hangs, using 50-60% CPU and no network
activity. I restored the C drive and MBR from a week ago (Aconis
image) and it got better for a little while but it was back. Then I
tried refreshing Firefox, same thing, OK for a while then it started
slowing down again. There is no particular page activity.
Event recorder shows this
Warning TCP/IP has reached the security limit...
Error ...DCOM got error the service cannot be started because it is
not enabled or no enabled devices attempting to start gupdate with
argument /comsvc

Another alarming info message is remote console app started. I thought
I had that turned off.

To make matters worse Internet Exploder is broke too so I don't really
have a way of comparing them. IE8 says it thinks I have a firewall
setting wrong but I turned Norton and Window firewall off still no
joy.

I am starting to think I have been hacked or that Firefox is the
virus.
My next step may be to unplug the other drives to be sure they are not
infected and putting the bug back on, Format C: and reload with an
even older image from a remote drive. See how long that runs OK

The OS throttles outgoing incomplete connections
(according to this).

https://serverfault.com/questions/51...-event-message

They interpret this as some malware (a spambot) is trying
to open connections somewhere, and the activity is preventing
your other (normal) network traffic.

Maybe then, Firefox hangs as it's getting queued on outgoing
connections or something ?

You need to send a scanning crew on board, and
figure out where it's hiding :-)

Paul

That is what I suspect but the Norton scan did not show anything and I
think they swallowed Malwarebytes.

Do you have any offline discs ?

The Kaspersky one didn't seem to be working right
the last time I tried it. If you had an older
Kaspersky disc, it's possible it will still contact
the server and get 100MB of definitions. At least
that one, it detects EICAR test string.

Bitdefender has one (offline disc), but it didn't leave a strong
impression when I tried it.

Adwcleaner used to be produced by one guy. Then it
changed hands and one of the AV companies got it.
One of the things that does, is scan prefs.js for
stuff (settings that don't belong). It's supposed
to remove adware.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

When a larger company gets it, that's when the tool
will gain "ambitions". And whatever advantage there
was to it being an independent operation would be lost.

There are also scanners I used to use, where you'd
swear all they were doing was wasting CPU cycles.

*******

Microsoft also makes an offline version of Windows Defender
for occasions like this. But... forget it. It's kinda
a version-locked thing. You would not expect help for
a WinXP user. A bridge too far.

Paul


I reloaded IE8 trying to fix that problem and it ran some kind of
microsoft scan about 20 minutes but it was using a 2010 definition I
imagine.
This is strange. If it starts slowing down I can close out FF, restart
it and it works OK again. It really just seems to be bad on things
that are highly ad supported like Facebook or a boat forum I look at.
I think you are right about an ad bot.
I am going to turn on that connection monitor in FF and see if I can
find the culprit.


You never mentioned what add-ons you've installed into IE and Firefox.
Did you try disabling them all or, at least, trying loading Firefox in
its safe mode?


I looked and they are all pretty much disabled anyway (shockwave,
silverlight, Java development Acrobat etc).
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