Freeze Demo Jig Fugue

This is to demonstrate a problem I'm having with my browser. Every few seconds, seemingly at random intervals, the browser will freeze up solid. The length of time it remains frozen depends on the system load. So for instance if my system is lightly loaded, it might only freeze for a quarter of a second, but if my system is heavily loaded, if I'm encoding a video for example, each freeze may be several seconds long. However, the time between freezeups is not affected by the system load as far as I can tell. If the freezeup lasts long enough, the audio will be interrupted as well as the video.

When the browser freezes, everything freezes - buttons won't press, pages won't scroll, text input won't show up, and flash animation freezes up. Here you can see the flash player freezing up while playing a video, and as I'm typing this my cursor will occasionally freeze and no letters will appear during the freeze, then after it comes unstuck, all the letters I typed during the freeze will suddenly appear.

I'm wondering if anybody has had or heard of a similar problem, and if so, were you able to figure it out or solve it?

Info: Firefox 3.0.7, Canonical version (comes with Ubuntu Linux).
Ubuntu Studio 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).
Dual Intel Xeon 2.20 GHz processors, 1Gig ram. Everything runs nice and smooth, even under load, except for the browser.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Firefox
• browser
• intermittent
• freezeup
• Ubuntu
• Linux

[WimpeyPopeye]

I see what you are talking about. I haven't experienced this with mine. The only pause I have experienced wasn't with viewing videos but responses to my mouse clicks. It was caused by having over 20 tabs open and about a dozen apps running.

[ccoraxfan]

I tend to run with lots of tabs and apps running too, but Firefox is the only app that pauses like that. I'm still trying to track it down for sure, but I suspect it may be my Flash plugin.

[timmiesnotacrackhead]

and the witch marches in

[RobtheKappelmeister]

Same thing happens to me! I think it has to do with the processor, but I'm no computer expert.