How to Speed Up Firefox 3.5 Startup on Windows

End of last month Firefox 3.5 was released after that it captured more then 2% of the market and still counting. However many users counting me in found that Firefox 3.5 took long time in starting up. Usually it should take around 2-3 second, but if it takes more then that then you may be experience a bug in Firefox 3.5.

 

 

Reason of slow startup in Firefox 3.5

For security purposes on Windows Firefox 3.5 has to pull data from certain files randomly. Which could lead to slow startup in Windows. These flies involves scanning some temporary folders looking for bits normally added by OS and other applications. It also looks under the subfolders to increase its randomness where it hits the unexpected slow startup.

Workaround to solve this issue

So the main cause of the issue is that if you have many temporary files or folders it leads to slow startup. So by deleting these temporary folders and internet temporary files which is generated by Internet Explorer you can improve the startup time.

To clean temporary folders you can open these folders as follows and delete all files.

Note: Some files might be in use. So check them before deleting them.

On Windows:

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

On Windows Vista / 7:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
%TEMP%

You can also delete Internet Temporary Folders by going through these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Open Internet Options.
3. In the Browsing History section, press the Delete button
4. Check all the options and press Delete.
5. That should do it.

I have personally tried these steps and it gave significant improvement not only for me but for other users as well. We would have to do these steps till this bug gets fixed which should be available with Firefox 3.5.1, expected in coming few weeks.

[Source: Mozilla Links ]