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Halve your Firefox start-up time with the hackiest hack ever
Dubbed his "hackiest hack ever," the same Mozilla developer who brought us the the 20-line Firefox start-up speed hack has now released an add-on that works even better!Start Faster, which requires Firefox 4 and only works on Windows Vista and 7 at the moment, installs a service that speeds up the loading of Firefox's gorillaesque DLL libaries. The service runs with Administrator privileges, which allows Firefox to bypass the Windows prefetcher, improving start-up time by up to 100%. The one caveat is that you must launch Firefox using the new "Faster Firefox" shortcut that will be dumped on your desktop after installing the add-on.
If you want empirical evidence of the start-up speed-up, be sure to grab the About Startup add-on, which will show you your startup time if you visit about:startup. Both Start Firefox and About Startup are restartless, by the way!
Incidentally, if you don't like the idea of running an add-on that requires Administrator access, feel free to check through the source. We're fairly certain the add-on is safe, though.
Mozilla has toyed with the idea of using Windows services since 2009. They provide a great way of performing administrative tasks, such as updating Firefox in the background or defragmenting Firefox's databases. Start Faster is a proof of concept add-on that will hopefully be baked into a future version of Firefox.
Comments
14
Subscribe to commentsAemonyMar 11th 2011 8:33AM
Oh, the irony of startup extensions being restartless! :D
multipetrosMar 11th 2011 8:52AM
Great idea! And really speed the startup of our favorite browser.
Anyway, some times, when I try to open the Firefox, the process of before 'closed' browser still alive, prompted me about that and the only way to reopen the browser is by hitting 'Alt+Ctrl+Del', open the task manager, find the process and terminated it manualy. That's so annoying I think...
So, I made the Firerestarter. An open source tiny tool, written in C#, targeting the .Net/Mono framework, that do the 'dirty' job for us. It can be used for any program, not only for Mozilla Firefox.
For more info see at my blog's post at http://multipetros.blogspot.com/2011/03/firerestarter.html
Also, you can find the binary and the source code at Google's Project Hosting Homepage for Firerestarter at http://code.google.com/p/firerestarter/
RogueJedi86Mar 11th 2011 9:02AM
If you run this Faster Firefox shortcut, will it open all the tabs you had open in regular Firefox? I'd hate to lose my dozens of tabs in the process.
Sebastian AnthonyMar 11th 2011 9:05AM
@RogueJedi86 Yep, it seems to be fine.
FezMar 11th 2011 12:34PM
Sweet tip man! The startup is just as fast as Chrome 10 now!
EuroSceptiCMar 11th 2011 1:51PM
I removed it and the service left in, running... I really hate that...
I don't really need it, cause my cold StartUp already is fast enough... Almost instant, plus session restore.
But now, what I do to get rid of it?
LecksfrawenMar 11th 2011 5:54PM
@EuroSceptiC To remove the service follow the steps in the last four paragraphs of this article: http://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/11/start-faster-promises-faster-firefox-startup-speeds-on-windows/
NyaRMar 11th 2011 4:10PM
Firefox is done dealeded in the time it starts up I can launch a chromium, an opera, an internet explorer 9 and probably a kmeleon and then firefox will pop up and not respond for about 10 seconds before I end task/ragequit.
/Not a fanboy
//Not a hater
///Used phoenix in netscape days and this firefox 4 is spitting in the face of everything phoenix and firebird stood for.
MxxConMar 11th 2011 4:51PM
Oh the irony..
When Adobe Reader, Quicktime and Java had these resident preloaders, people were screaming and raving that it's a bloatware that slows down their computers and started releasing "lite" packages.
But now you go ahead and install one of these bloatware adds on your own :/
fleetwoodMar 11th 2011 7:06PM
@MxxCon
yea I agree but Google has had this going on for the longest.(Googleupdateservice)
Apple of course also has this and more with;(see below)
-iTunesHelper.exe
-AppleMobileDeviceService.exe
-iPodservice.exe
EuroSceptiCMar 12th 2011 7:34AM
@Lecksfrawen Thank you!
XenoMar 13th 2011 7:04AM
@arianne.leiker8419 - Change it.
Firefox button > Options > Options > general > Home Page
XenoMar 13th 2011 7:19AM
I think the download link has been removed, I managed to integrate it into one of my other computers though, and I have to be honest I didn't notice much of a boost there.
twensapowrtMar 14th 2011 12:51AM
When i open it, the tab says Mozilla Firefox (Not Responding) and its just a white screen. So i have to let it sit for about five minutes for it to pull up my homepage. And i know it's not my internet connection because Internet Explorer works just fine
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