One way to approach the issue in my previous post about the Firefox browser sending my CPU to 100% is to start over.  Mozilla Firefox 3.6 by PortableApps provides a simple way to create a fresh Firefox install. It gets installed in a separate directory so that you are sure to not overwrite or mix up the new installation with the original installation of Firefox.

I am going to install the Add-ons that I know I want first and then see what I miss and add them in slowly.  Here is my list to start with.

Firefox Add-ons

MeasureIt 0.4.6- measure anything in the browser

The Microsoft .NET framework Assistant 1.2.1 installed itself

Roboform attached itself to the new browser installation by defualt, which is pretty cool. Awesome password manager

Screengrab 0.96.3 – I learned that the Giant download button is not for Screen Grab. Read carefully before clicking.  Screen shots

SEO For Firefox 3.4.2  Agh. I have to register. I will do that later. Valuable SEO information

Session Manager 0.6.9.3 – Save all tabs. Great in case something crashes. Start right where you left off

YSlow 2.1.0 – Make your pages faster with Yahoo!’s page performance tool

ColorZilla 2.2.2 – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies

Firebug 1.6.1 – Web Development Evolved

Greasemonkey 0.8.20100408.6 – A User Script Manager for Firefox

PDF Download 3.0.0.1 – Allows you to choose what to do with a PDF file: download it, view it with an external viewer or view it as HTML

SearchStatus 1.34 – Display the Google, Alexa, Compete and Linkscape ranking with search-related tools

Tabberwocky 1.1 – Tabs: duplicate, lock, multi-row, progress bar, new and close buttons, menu and more

At this point the CPU is sitting quietly nearly at zero.

Major Disappointment

My expectations are not met. I thought that installing the PortableApps Firefox in a different directory would not interfere with my current installation of Firefox. That is how it worked when I did this some years ago.

Now I have to go figure out where all of the information about my old Firefox installation is stored and import it into this installation.

UPDATE:

I restored my bookmarks and rebooted my computer. Now I seem to only have the original Firefox with all of it’s history, toolbars, plugins and so on.  Maybe I can only run one version of Firefox at a time.

I closed Firefox and launched the PortableApps version and it works just fine.  You can only run one at time, unlike some Internet Explorer software that I ran which allowed multiple versions to run concurrently.

So now either version of Firefox will work.  Both are behaving quite well. I will continue trying to get the CPU to 100% in the old version of Firefox.  I guess that the reboot was probably important as well.