Firefox pegging out firewall ???

I installed a new firewall ( "SecurePoint ") not too long ago and I did not observe any problems.

Then recently I upgraded to Firefox 0.9.2 and immediately noticed that the firewall was jumping to 90-some percent CPU usage and staying there for a second or two then it would dip to anywhere from zero to 50 percent for a second and then go right back up to max out.

I am fairly certain, but not absolutely positive, that this problem surfaced as a result of the upgrade.

Make any sense? Any ideas?

 

keywester,

Doubtful that the Firefox upgrade had anything to do with your Firewall application. All the upgrade did was add this preference listing:
network.protocol-handler.external.shell, with a Value of "true ". This should have no effect whatsoever on CPU usage.

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona,

I guess I missed something somewhere along the way - must have been something in between the initial shakedown of the firewall and the upgrade, and just didn't notice the start of the firewall pegging until right after the upgrade...

Thanks for the reply.

 

Hi Ramona & keywester...

Just an FYI...after uninstalling Firefox 0.9.1 and installed 0.9.2 I am also getting the CPU hit as well. I had to kill the Firefox.exe process to be able to write this up.

Update...

I jsut rebooted for the second time and so far all is well. Firefox is taking "00" CPU. One thing I forgot to mention was after installing and rebooting I starting surfing. I came to a page that needed the shockware Flash Plugin installed and right after installing the plugin is when my CPU pinned at 100% on Firefox.

 

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the feedback. I feel sure that the Shockwave Flash had much more to do with the cpu surge than the preference which was added.

Ramona

 

Hi Ramona...

Since my last post I have been doing 95% of all my surfing and posting with Firefox and have had no ill effects since my initial problem. I tend to agree with you that my issues were probably the Shockwave update.

Thanks,

 

Firefox is fine, it is the fireWALL that is yoyo-ing the CPU usage, it's just that I am pretty sure that the problem started right after the Firefox upgrade, but it must have been something else that transpired within the same time frame that triggered the problem (also at the same time, a problem with already installed software trying to re-install itself surfaced, so maybe my hard drive hiccuped or something). Anyway, guess I will try another firewall to eliminate the problem, altho the not-cut-down Securepoint passed-all-the-tests freeware firewall sure was great for a while - actually, guess I will try re-installing it first before giving up on it...

 

"Posting back" with the epiphany.

As hinted that I might do, I did uninstall the securepoint firewall, almost reverted to another one that I had used that was not as secure, but since securepoint turned out to be not-cut-down freeware that passed all online tests and I was quite impressed with it, I decided to risk a re-install of securepoint just in case I had missed something (imagine that ).

Well, LSS, as I was sitting there doing the re-install, it flashed through (what little is left of) my mind that securepoint had prompted for an update (as I recall, in the midst of a bunch of other major events...probably the Firefox upgrade) and I had allowed it. A rather insignificant event that I did not note in my "mods log" and consequently forgot about until now. Bottom line, the reinstall fixed the problem, so something went afowl (quack quack) with the firewall "update ". Now, everything is back to normal, and I will watch warily for and take note of updates to the firewall in the future. Sorry Firefox for the foxfire implication.

 

Hi keywester,

Thanks for the feedback, and I know that Firefox forgives you!

Ramona