Websites become unresponsive for ~30 seconds and then return to normal on their own

[Tigro]

In the past weeks, suddenly my Firefox started behaving really weird - a few times a day the currently opened tab becomes unresponsive (you can't click or hover anything) but you can still scroll through them (at least a bit - after that point, it's just plain white). At these times, the cursor is the hand one or the arrow one during the whole unresponsiveness episode, regardless of what you're pointing at, it just gets frozen in the last state. You also can't close the tab during this tab - the only way is either to wait a good 30 seconds for it to unfreeze or to change to a different tab and close the unresponsive one. When you do change tabs, though, the newly opened tab sometimes disappears completely, with a radial loading circle appearing in the middle of the screen for a few seconds before it magically reappears (it does _not_ reload, though!). From what I've been able to observe, this tends to appear on content-heavy websites like Reddit, Facebook, Google Images or YouTube most often but it does happen on sites with less content as well, just not as frequently.

Tried reinstalling Firefox - to no avail. Tried Safe Mode - didn't help. Neither CPU or RAM usage is high during the unresponiveness episodes

What is happening? I haven't changed my browsing habits in the past weeks, nor have I installed any new add-ons. I've tried disabling the ones I have but it's still happening with them turned off. What else may I try?

 

[Ralston18]

Only Firefox? Only when online?

What version of Windows are you using?

What mouse are you using? Have you tried reinstalling the mouse drivers?

What about the GPU drivers?

Do you see any Network issues via Task Manager and Resource Monitor?

 

[Tigro]

Only Firefox? Only when online?

Yes and yes

What version of Windows are you using?

Windows 7 Professional

What mouse are you using? Have you tried reinstalling the mouse drivers?

Logitech MX518, the same one for the past 10 or so years. No, I havent' tried reinstalling the drivers - come on, that's definitely not a mouse problem

What about the GPU drivers?

I have them on auto update so I have the latest ones.

Do you see any Network issues via Task Manager and Resource Monitor?

Nope, no issues there

 

[Ralston18]

Would not rule out a mouse problem per se.

Does not take much of a driver problem or conflict with other software to wreak havoc.

Check Firefox's website (Forums, FAQs) to see if anyone else is asking about similar problems.

I did some quick checking about and found the following link:

https/windowsreport.com/firefox-slow-windows-10/

Not recommending any of the suggested downloads per se. Just take a look at some of the diagnostic solutions. Also favors Windows 10 but no harm in checking within Windows 7 either.

The other immediate option is to open Event Viewer and look through the various logs for any error codes or warnings that occur just before or at the time of the freezes.

Clicking any given log entry will provide more details about what happened.

If you are not familiar with Event Viewer, start with this link from within this Forum:

http/www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3128616/windows-event-viewer.html