FireFox freeze, crash, stall as soon as I open Zotero

TheAntipodean
Hi all,
Zotero seems like a wonderful idea. Then again so did Mendeley. I couldn't use Mendeley as with 5000ish references the connection with the cloud was impossibly slow.
Unfortunately I can't even get that far with Zotero; if I enable the plugin, and click on the 'z' to open it up, it immediately freezes/stalls/crashes Firefox.
No error message, just STOP.
Both my work desktop and laptop suffer the same problem.
I have tried reinstalling both Firefox and the plugin, tried disabling AdBlock Plus, but no love.
It would be nice to compare to EndNote, so any suggestion most welcome.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    How long are you waiting?

    Are you using a custom data directory in the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs (accessible via Tools->Add-ons->Extensions->Zotero) or the default?
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    And is the Zotero pane opening before the freeze? If so, it may be auto-syncing and you're just not waiting for it to complete.
  • TheAntipodean
    Hi Dan,
    Thanks for your input on NY day and all!
    The pane opens. Then Firefox is frozen. I have waited for several minutes on some occasions. Done the impatient click.click.click.... to get to FireFox is not responding. AltCtrlDel.
    I once managed to try and upload my ref list (as exported from EndNote) but it got stuck doing that time as well (was over a month ago).
    Any suggestion most welcome.
    Happy New Year!
    CG
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    If Zotero is trying to sync a very large library, it could be more than a few minutes.

    It's easy enough to see if it's syncing—just disable auto-sync from the Sync pane of the Zotero preferences.
  • TheAntipodean
    Again, thank you.

    If Zotero is enabled, opening the pane itself is enough to freeze everything; I am not able to interact in any other way with Zotero or FireFox, e.g. to disable auto-sync.

    I will however try enabling Zotero, opening the pane, and then going off for an extended period to see if it can sort itself out, given enough time.

    Thanks again,
    CG
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    I said above how to access the preferences without opening the Zotero pane.

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