Slow Firefox Startup In Windows?

If you are a Windows user and Firefox 3.5 is starting rather slow then this is the link for you. Mozillalinks has posted a work around for this issue and users are reporting good results. I haven't noticed this issue myself since I am predominately using Firefox 3.5 in Linux right now. They are reporting that a fix is in the works from Mozilla coming in v3.5.1. So hop over to Mozillalinks if this issue is effecting your Firefox.

Stop: 0X000000D1

I powered on my laptop to Windows XP a few days ago. I really haven't been using it with Windows lately preferring Fedora 11. But I had to do some banking and I have yet to move stuff to Linux in this area yet. I still want more experience with the OS before I commit this information. So on this night I logged into the bank and did what I needed to do. No problems with that. I'm logged in and I might as well check out the web and see what's going on tonight. Then it hit. At first my connection slowed to a crawl and I thought I was getting pegged by malware. So I ran a scan but it came up empty. Then I went back to surf some more but nothing would open. I pinged a site and that was okay so I re-booted the router. Still nothing. It was then that the dreaded blue screen appeared. Stop: 0X000000D1, IRQ_not_less_equal. Believe it or not but this was the very first blue screen I have ever had with this laptop. Needless to say I was a bit bummed and confirmed to myself that this is why I am going to Linux. Any way the stop error referenced the NDIS driver and I knew exactly what to do. Yesterday I finally got around to downloading the driver update from Dlink and I installed it today.No more BSOD and I'm running it right now. It is always puzzling as to why after all this time, hundreds of hours in use, the driver decided to go south. I haven't even used it except about twice a week lately to do my banking. This is just one of those Windows mysteries that hopefully Microsoft will improve with Windows 7. I admit I have been really lucky about blue screens with this laptop. I just can't figure out what happened. Well for me anyway, I will continue on my quest to learn Linux better and eventually do my banking on it too.

One of the most famous and funniest BSOD's of all time.

Fedora and Firefox Update Agony

As I reported in the last post, Firefox 3.5 update is finally in the repositories for Fedora. Now I usually don't have many bad things to say about Fedora but this update was not thought out very well. When I ran the update to my surprise when Firefox started, the add-ons dialog box came up confirming I had installed 73 add-ons. Wait a minute I thought, I didn't approve this type of install nor was I told or given a choice. The add-on are all foreign language packs that I wouldn't ever use. This should have been a choice to install or to pick and choose which ones to install. Too many add-ons will slow performance in Firefox and I definitely did not need all 73 packs. So if this happens to you here is my solution. Open a terminal session as root and enter:
(The # just denotes root, no need to re-enter it.)

# cd /usr/lib/firefox-3.5
# firefox

This will launch Firefox as root. I had a couple of warnings that I ignored. From here you can open the Add-ons tool and un-install any language pack you don't need. A bit tedious but it gets the job done. If anyone knows of a better way let us know in the comments.

Firefox 3.5 Available In Fedora Repositories

The full release of Firefox 3.5 is now available in the software updater application. Fedora 11 was released with Firefox-3.5b4 which was one of the last beta releases. If you are running Fedora you can now update using the Add/Remove Software tool or Yum. I have not checked other distros but I'm sure they are updating as well given the popularity of Firefox especially in the Linux community.

6 More Days For Special Windows 7 Offer

I know this is a little late but when something like this pops up you have to tell folks about it. If you have any desire to upgrade to Windows 7 this may be the time to order. Read all the details on the Microsoft Windows Blog about the offer. The following is from the blog:

"Finally, as a way of saying thank you to our loyal Windows customers, we are excited to introduce a special time limited offer! We will offer people in select markets the opportunity to pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99. You can take advantage of this special offer online via select retail partners such as Best Buy or Amazon, or the online Microsoft Store (in participating markets)."

Lately I have been concentrating on Firefox and Linux so it was easy for me to let this news slip by. Personally I have no intention of upgrading to Windows 7 until I buy a new laptop. I don't see any reason to updgrade until there are benefits for my equipment. Your milage may vary so if you were or are planning to upgrade you might want to consider this offer.

Firefox Downloads Surpass 12 Million Worldwide

This is really cool a real-time map and graph of Firefox downloads. The USA leads the way with over 2 million downloads as I write this. I find this very interesting in the gee-wiz category. How high will it reach after one week?

Xmarks Available For IE

Now I admit this isn't headline news any longer. It has been available since April 3, 2009 but I just discovered it tonight. I use several different computers from the three I have here at home to all the ones I use at work. On some machines my bookmarks are lengthy and well organized. On others they are a complete mess. What a pain, ugh. Why I never searched for a solution before will always remain a mystery. At work I use IE only to see sites as most of my customers will see them. I still feel the need to keep up to speed with IE since I do provide support for end users. But at home I am almost exclusive to Firefox (also use Seamonkey which is based on Firefox). In comes Xmarks also formally known as Foxmarks providing a tool to sync all my browsers on all the machines I use everyday.