How to make your Firefox load faster at startup

Apr

2009

How to make your Firefox load faster at startup

I have already spoken of how to make your Firefox load faster than ever, thanks to a couple of simple tricks. However, if you are not into tweaking your applications because you are not a big geek and you prefer to rely on applications which “almost” work out-of-the-box, here is a nice script which can be quite useful to you.

UPX is a simple but powerful file which, by compressing the DLLs and executables, is able to boost your Firefox startup. Here is the simple procedure to achieve this incredible result:

Download the UPX file here.
Now, turn off Firefox.
Extract and put the UPX.exe file into your Firefox folder which usually is located under C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.
Now, click Start.
In the Search Box (in Windows Vista), type cmd and press Enter.
You should now be in the command prompt black window.
Locate your Firefox folder. To do that type cd.. and press Enter. Again, type cd.. and press Enter. At this point you should be in the main root (C:\).
Now go on and type, cd Program Files and hit Enter. Now, type cd Mozilla Firefox.
Now you should be in the Firefox main folder.
At this point type: for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v” and hit Enter.
Done!

Tags: Firefox, freeware, trick

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11 Comments to “How to make your Firefox load faster at startup”

Isaac Says:
August 2nd, 2009

Does this work on mac os x?
blah Says:
September 15th, 2009

Does this work for windows XP? The instructions seem to be a little confusing:(…Please clarify!
Jerry Says:
October 9th, 2009

Thanks so much for the instructions. Excellent! It does work on Windows XP SP3.
s3m4ph0r3 Says:
December 3rd, 2009

I kept getting FileNotFoundExceptions.
I had to use the following command for it to work.
for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx C:\Progra~1\Mozill~1\%v
jad Says:
December 12th, 2009

i did not understand the meaning of ” for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v” and hit Enter. ”
what do you mean by this?
Delly Says:
December 12th, 2009

It is supposed to be a command…I guess there is nothing to understand!
Chris Says:
January 6th, 2010

Here is another performance tip for Firefox.
http://chrisbarba.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/optimize-firefox-speed-it-up/
.-= Chris´s last blog ..Windows 7 GodMode (or 32bit Vista) =-.
Martin M Says:
July 2nd, 2010

@jad: In a nutshell, the command compresses the Windows executables and Dynamic Link Libraries in the current and listed subfolders using the UPX utility.
I believe the idea is that they will then all load faster because of their new smaller compressed file sizes.
Martin M Says:
July 2nd, 2010

As @s3m4ph0r3 points out, you’ll get FileNotFound exceptions from UPX if you cut and paste the the command shown in step 10. The problem is the quotes are not the ASCII ” character, but rather are the Unicode UTF character codes for “ and ” which are quotation-mark-left-double-reversed comma and quotation-mark-right-double comma respectively. The correct command is:
for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v"
Using this got rid of all but one UPX error. The remain one was that it couldn’t compress one file. I thought that would be OK, but Firefox 3.6.6 would crash when starting afterwards.
I’m not going to purse this any further, but would suggest that you back up your “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox” folder before trying this tip to make it easy to restore things if it doesn’t work for you…
kevin may Says:
July 5th, 2010

it works on windows 7
Kujtim Says:
January 22nd, 2012

It didnt work on windows 7 ultimate