BD Antivirus Plus Makes Firefox First Startup Painfully And Crippingly Slow (30 sec). Any Help?

Tato
Tato
edited December 2022 in Protection - Malware/ Firmware/etc.

I run Bitdefender on 2 computers, both have the same problem even though they are reasonably powerful configurations (i7 1165g7 and 1260p both with 16gb, Wind11 21h2 and 22h2 respectively): I had noticed loading at Windows startup was a little slow even though I have very few other apps on autorun (Google Drive and ProtonVPN, I recently dropped Adguard because I thought it could be reason of my problems with Firefox) but it is more than acceptable, my only issue is with Firefox.

Even if I give Windows more than enough time to start up, everything is up and running in systray, when I go and run Firefox I am left hanging for about 30 seconds with Firefox apparently loading things but unresponsive.

I thought it could have something to do with Adguard (DNS settings perhaps), so after some tweaking I uninstalled it; then I moved on to ProtonVPN and did the same with no result; little by little I disabled every single feature on Firefox (no sync, no bookmarks, no add-ons...) until I was running it with no active user log in... sadly to no avail.

I recently reinstalled Windows from scratch, and started experiencing the same issue right away, when Bitdefender was the only other app installed. So I decided to disable Bitdefender and now it works. It doesn't matter how many extension or addons I use, how many things I sync, Firefox now starts instantly, even with ProtonVPN active, even with uBlock Origin extension active. But as soon as I turn on Bitdefender's Antivirus and reboot I am back to long waits.

This happens with both my computers. Both quite powerful configurations, both with very few apps installed.

Is there anything I can do to fix it? Any suggestion?

I forgot to mention that Edge seems to be totally unaffected: while Firefox is trying to load, I can open Edge, surf to whatever page I need, search things on Google, close Edge and still end up waiting for Firefox to respond.

Thanks. And sorry if I didn't post this message in the right section.

Answers

  • Gjoksi
    Gjoksi Defender of the month mod

    Hello.

    I believe the issue with the slow Firefox start-up has something to do with the Bitdefender Anti-Tracker extension.

    So, follow these steps:

    • launch Mozilla Firefox

    • click the menu in the upper right-hand corner

    • select Add-ons

    • click Disable next to Bitdefender Anti-tracker to disable this extension

    or simply remove the extension from your Firefox browser.

    I have Firefox 108.0 and uBlock Origin 1.45.2 with all filter lists selected, and never experienced such a Firefox slow start-up.

    Just to mention that Bitdefender Anti-Tracker extension is NOT installed on my Firefox browser.

    Regards.

  • Tato
    Tato

    Hi,

    thank you for the quick answer.

    Unfortunately I have no such extension installed, active or otherwise...

    By the way, I can activate without causing any impact AT ALL on loading times:

    • Ransomware remediation
    • Vulnerability
    • Online Threat Prevention
    • Advanced Threat Defence

    Firefox will open and load almost instantly, with no detectable delay, on both my computers. But as soon as I toggle on Bitdefender Shield and reboot, I'm back to 30 sec loading time..!

  • JesseJ
    JesseJ

    Hi,

    same problem here with Librewolf 108.0.1-1 (Firefox fork).

    I'm using following add-ons: Dark Reader, LibreWolf Updater and uBlock Origin.

    If Bitdefender Shield is turned on, the 1st startup of Librewolf takes 38s. If not, it takes approx. 1s.

    My configuration: Core i5-12400, 16 GB RAM, Windows 11 Pro (22H2).

    Here's another report: https://malwaretips.com/threads/firefox-slow-startup-for-the-past-year-with-bitdefender.119081/

    Any suggestions?

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