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    Why is Firefox faster in XP than Vista?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by KnightUnit, Aug 9, 2007.

  1. KnightUnit

    KnightUnit Notebook Evangelist

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    Just thought I would go back on my old Sony for a bit (see sig) and firefox loads in a split second when I click the icon, but on my (alot) newer T61 with vista it takes 2 - 3 seconds to load from icon click. They both have AVG and run pretty light in terms of startup and processes..

    Any ideas? to help speed it up in Vista.
     
  2. minimalism

    minimalism Notebook Geek

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    More of your 1 gig of ram in Vaio is available to start Firefox in XP than the 2 gigs of ram in your Vista-laden Thinkpad.
     
  3. SmoothTofu

    SmoothTofu Inspiron 1420 Owner

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    Use Opera. It's a speed demon web browser.
     
  4. yin

    yin Notebook Consultant

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    Does prefetch cache have anything to do with the performance difference? I've noticed that sometimes if I set the /prefetch:1 switch in the shortcut command line, my Firefox starts up a little faster.
     
  5. f4ding

    f4ding Laptop Owner

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    Or try K-meleon
     
  6. INEEDMONEY

    INEEDMONEY Homicidal Teddy Bear

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    Opera is very fast. just doesn't have all the addons and such that FF has.
     
  7. Apollo13

    Apollo13 100% 16:10 Screens

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    Addons could be the culprit. I noticed just three of them slowed me down, so I uninstalled them. Do you have more addons on the Vista machine?
     
  8. allan_huang

    allan_huang Notebook Deity

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    Everything in Vista is slower than XP :p
     
  9. LIVEFRMNYC

    LIVEFRMNYC Blah Blah Blah!!!

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    Same reason why FireFox is Faster on Ubuntu(linux) than both XP & Vista.
     
  10. LiveStrong

    LiveStrong Notebook Consultant

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    Its possible that the reason firefox starts up slower in Vista is because the OS is indexing, prefetching, etc. If that is the case, then your load times should become quicker over time.
     
  11. KnightUnit

    KnightUnit Notebook Evangelist

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    IE7 starts in a flash in Vista, as do most other apps. Just FF that hangs, I dont recall it doing it a month ago...
     
  12. lunateck

    lunateck Bananaed

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    Vista hates FFs.. lol..
    but seriously, you really need time for vista to break in... it is real dang slow when u hav a fresh reinstall.
     
  13. LIVEFRMNYC

    LIVEFRMNYC Blah Blah Blah!!!

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    IE7 in Vista is faster than FireFox in Vista to me. Anybody else notice this?
     
  14. KnightUnit

    KnightUnit Notebook Evangelist

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    I will give it time to break in, all other apps run fine and I run it pretty light (46 processes running after boot)