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Solved: Why won't my laptop run Firefox?

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MilesAhead:
Shades idea of trying a portable version of FF (if such a thing exists) is a good one.
-mouser (February 26, 2015, 08:36 AM)
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PortableApps.com  FF is one of the featured programs on the page.  I have FF Portable 35.01.  The cool thing is you can just copy the whole folder into a Windows Virtual Machine guest to have your AddOns and bookmarks without using Sync.  More often than not once you run a few FF in various places sync just scrambles everything into a pile.

TaoPhoenix:
Or the other whole discussion of running Pale Moon or even the older Cometbird. So depending on exactly what you need "flagship" Firefox for, if anything, Pale Moon specifically was supposed to be recompiled to help boost a little bit of performance.

If those work, something may be sour with whatever new tweaks flagship FF is doing lately and then when you have "FF vs FF-clone", maybe that can shed some clues.

IainB:
...More often than not once you run a few FF in various places sync just scrambles everything into a pile
-MilesAhead (February 26, 2015, 10:32 AM)
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When I read that, I thought I should mention that my experience of using FF (Beta update channel) is that, quite to the contrary to what you stated, FF Sync works like a charm.
The only real problem I have had with FF tends to be what is an apparently common recurring problem that, on the beta update channel, with all the frequent updates, FF performance tends to occasionally decline/misbehave to the extent that the only way to fix it is to start FF up in base form (i.e., without any add-ons, etc.), and then re-install all the add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts etc. manually. I got the advice to do that from some helpful forum/blog posts, and it turned out to be good advice.
However, there was a real problem with following that advice - you are then forced into a seriously tedious exercise of manually re-installing all the add-ons and other stuff, which is a proverbial PITA.

I discovered that I was able to automate it all (except for Greasemonkey scripts) through the use of FF Sync, which automatically re-installs all the add-ons and other stuff (e.g., including bookmarks) that you can choose to sync. You may have to manually reset some settings, but that's about it.
However, I had to reinstall the Greasemonkey scripts manually, which was another PITA. Then at some stage a Greasemonkey update introduced an option to "Enable Firefox Sync for User Scripts", so that got rid of the PITA.

FF Sync has been operating thus, apparently faultlessly, for me and for a long time. I changed to the latest version of FF Sync some time back when they first introduced it. Sync has enabled me to sync FF smoothly across 3 computers, even with up to 3 different users sharing/syncing things like the FF bookmarks on those computers. FF Sync is pretty smart.
The only surprising thing I find about FF Sync is that it doesn't scramble the stuff up.

Curt:
It might also be worth installing an older version of FF.  Try something that was released in 2009.
***compatibility issues***
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-MilesAhead (February 26, 2015, 08:33 AM)
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***I am typing this in Firefox 3.5.19. It is a very fast browser***

I tried the portable version 35, but it still won't go anywhere, just like any other new Firefox won't. Each one was removed via Revo Uninstaller Pro > Advanced.

So I guess it now is all about testing, how old a Firefox must be, to run on my laptop.

MilesAhead:
So I guess it now is all about testing, how old a Firefox must be, to run on my laptop.

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I guess you have tried with all AddOns disabled?  Also you could try CometBird.  It stopped at v. 11.  I find many FF AddOns work but not all.

Edit:  How about the "use hardware acceleration where available" setting?  Perhaps the Laptop should run with the setting disabled.

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