Firefox 3 was hyped up to be faster, leaner and more optimized than the bloated Firefox 2, and for the most part, delivered. While competitors made their latest versions even faster, Firefox 3.5 ended up being not-so-satisfactory.
Firefox 3.5 has two known issues – memory consumption and excrutiatingly long startup time. Excess memory usage has been a problem for long, but version 3.5 also introduced a long startup time (some users have reported waiting minutes for Firefox to start up). This post provides some tips on speeding up the Firefox boot time.
The longer startup time is the result of a bug, or more accurately, a lack of foresight, in the implementation of a security feature. Firefox 3.5 requires randomness for security purposes, and on Windows, it gets this by scanning temporary folders. This is a disk-intensive process, and on computers with lots of temporary files and folders, it causes delays in startup.
Fix Firefox startup delay
The next dot release (like 3.5.1 or whatever) will likely include a patch to address this startup delay probelm, but until then, the solution is to clear temporary files and folders generated by Internet Explorer.
To do it the quick way, open Control Panel, then go to Internet Options. Under Browsing History, press Delete button, ensure that all options are checked and hit Delete.
If you would like, you can manually clear the files by following the instructions below.
In Windows XP
Empty the following folders in Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temp
C:\Documents And Settings\*user*\Recent
where *user* is your username.
In Windows Vista and Windows 7
Clear these folders if you use Windows 7 or Vista:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
%TEMP%
where %USERPROFILE% is your username.