End the War on Freedom

Many thanks, this solved the problem completely.
Firefox 1.5 on XP here.

I hate your personal politics (except your support for Denmark), but I love you for posting this. I'm a computer "expert", but I had no idea why Firefox kept locking up like that. Thanks for taking the time to suggest this fix, because it's going to prevent many a headache in the future.

Thanks!
Steve

Many thanks, this has been driving me potty for months.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious fix. So obvious I could see it under my own nose! :-)

This fixed it for me! THANKS

If the download history is way too large, or corrupted, the Download Manager itself or the "Clean Up" button may hang on Linux machines.

You can just blow its contents away from a terminal session:
cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default
>downloads.rdf

Thanks for the tip, though, this post led me to figure that out.

Works on my Mac too! OSX, Firefox 2.0, I was so annoyed and now I'm happy again.

It was driving me crazy. Thanks for the fix!

This seems like a huge bug. Even if the history file is a several meg, it shouldn't take tens of seconds to parse, and that's the delay I'm accustomed to. I had figured out that the problem was the download window, which I never used, so I just turned it off. Then, one day I needed it and it took 20 seconds or more to open.

Adam

Man, I was just about to move back to IE this thing was so bad. Made my beloved GMail almost useless. I'm in heaven again with Firefox and Gmail.

I have to ask:
1. Why does Firefox allow the damned list to get so long that it creates this problem BY DEFAULT. I mean limit it to the last 100 files downloaded or 25 or SOMETHING.

2. Why the heck did I not ever see the clean up button?

If you have a bookmark folder which is a general drop-box for incoming stuff, it can eventually cause delays also if it gets too full/huge. Remember to organize your bookmarks as they come in and keep your general "Bookmarks" folder as free of clutter as possible to avoid this issue.

Generally, it's probably just maybe a good idea to develop a habit of cleaning up various bits of your browser on a regular schedule to keep it running in top-form at all times. Download history, Browsing history, examine your cache once in a while with about:cache (in the address bar) and clear it if it needs it; all basic maintenance for most, if not all web browsers.

Also, it can help to disable or even uninstall any and all extensions you don't ever use. This also frees up resources for you to install extensions you WILL use. Check out Mozilla's extension page in the "Tools > Add-ons" menu. There's a billion useful goodies there. I HIGHLY recommend Adblock Plus and Noscript as the first two to add to ANY Mozilla. Instant safer and faster browsing.

HTH

YAYYYYYY!!!!! This fixed my problem too!!!! I can't possibly thank you enough, this made my whole summer. I was very close to giving up on firefox.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

Trina

Thank you ever so much for blogging this where Google could find it.

I was losing my mind and gnashing my teeth. BOOM! Fixed! Yay!

i wanted to kill myselft after having this problem for monthes! but such a simple solution for such a headache.

big ideas are always very simple. beauty is simple as well...

oh thanks

Again and again.

It works under Windoze with Firefox 2.0.x as well.

Damn This was the best tip I have had all month. I was using Flash Got and alternate download managers because firefox would take forever to download anything. Excellent tip. Works in 2.008 firefox as well

This is a wonderful little tip! Download processing in FFX was driving me nuts lately.

And that's a great tip btw. How'd you figure it out?

Thanks man...like many others, this was driving me mad!

Thanks for sharing! Who knew the solution would be so simple :-)

wadda bewdy .. gudonyamate for posting this ... you have restored my enjoyment for the use of FFox... I had switched back to using IE for dloads [which i really did not want to do }

go get yourself a contract with FFox ... you deserve it ;)

gudonyam8tnxalotavaguday ...

Nothing seemed to work. I finally found your site. Eureka! Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!

Thanks for taking the time to write about this matter. I'm quite pleased to see the solution is so simple. I had gone to using Safari when needing to download something for how intolerably slow it had gotten. I would never have thought such a simple function of the browser could be the culprit.
You have my gratitude.
Now if only one of the developers will take note and see to it no one else has to suffer...

Woah.. the Firefox folks should really look into keeping this from happening by default. Many people are probably switching browsers over this.

I've been irritated as hell at this issue for about a week. First site I clicked on when google'ing was this one, and the solution works perfect after more than 2 years. Good Catch Bill!