Firefox download delay solved
I’ve noticed for a while now that every time I try to download something via Firefox it takes a ridiculous amount of time for the ‘Save as’ and Download Manager dialogue windows to pop up and actually do anything. Very frustrating!
Turns out it’s because I never clear my download history…probably not a good idea, but it never occured to me. Today I hit ‘Clean up’ on the bottom right of the download manager, and now everything is nice and responsive again.
Michael Pultoian said,
May 14, 2007 @ 6:49 am · Edit
Wow. The problem you described has been driving me nuts for a long time, to the point that my downloading of video clips has a become very rare event. Then I hit the “Clean Up” button as you suggested and tried a couple of small video downloads. The downloading began almost instantly. Unbelievable! I cannot believe that that stupid “Clean Up” button has such a huge effect on the process. I thank you more than I can say for your simple yet effective solution to one of the most annoying problems I’ve come across, and for taking the time to post it for others. The !@#$% “Clean Up” button!!!!! Who would have thunk it? Thank you again and again and again.
klaas jan said,
June 28, 2007 @ 3:39 pm · Edit
Thanks for the info, gonna try it when i’m home from work. :p
joris said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:33 am · Edit
Just tried it and wow, what a speed increase! The only thing that’s still annoying me is that the OK button has a small delay before it is clickable (even with safe documents like pdf).
joris said,
June 29, 2007 @ 10:37 am · Edit
Oh nevermind, I just figured that out: you can just doubleclick on the grey OK button and it will open immediately.
Dennis McNeel said,
August 6, 2007 @ 7:48 pm · Edit
Thanks for this. This was also driving me nuts. I tried the clean button, but my CPU went to 100% for many minutes. I suspect that either the download.rdf file was too big or corrupt. I’m guessing corrupt because when I went to Documents and Settings and navigated to my Mozilla default directory, the download.rdf file was only 3.8 Mb. I made a folder called backup and moved the download.rdf file there. Voila! when downloading new files, there is no longer any delay, and Firefox made a new and small download.rdf file.
Thanks again!
tambor said,
August 26, 2007 @ 1:08 am · Edit
joris, I have had the same problem as you (inactive ‘ok’ button). the delay was HUGE tho – timed at 3:13 when downloading a file
e said,
March 7, 2008 @ 7:31 pm · Edit
Thank you SOOOO much for this simple fix.
The download window delay, or lag, has been driving my crazy for quite a while, on multiple computers. It was hard to find a solution searching the internet, though many seem to have this problem. Hopefully others who are suffering will find your page!!
Gone is my Biggest gripe with Firefox…...
F W said,
April 14, 2008 @ 9:31 pm · Edit
Great fix! This was driving me nuts! You should raise it with Mozilla to get them to prevent it happening…
Dan said,
January 16, 2009 @ 6:27 am · Edit
Man, such a simple fix. I was going to start using Chrome because of the insanely long times to download… and if I tried to bring up the download manager it would often drive me to and kill firefox to regain control.