Firefox and Thunderbird slows down in 10.4

There is no 10.1. Do you mean 9.10 ?

What video chip are you using?

On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 12:14 +0000, actionparsnip wrote:
> Your question #130684 on virtualbox-ose in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox-ose/+question/130684
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested for more information:
> There is no 10.1. Do you mean 9.10 ?
>
> What video chip are you using?
>

Yes, that was 9.10

Video chip? Is that information on the video card.
The chipset is Northbridge (got that from the BIOS info).

---------------------------- Don

What's "PCI video card" ?

On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 13:20 +0000, delance wrote:
> Your question #130684 on virtualbox-ose in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox-ose/+question/130684
>
> delance posted a new comment:
> What's "PCI video card" ?
>
The video card is a Diamond? Daytona? has a sticker with a big "D" on
it. 256 MB plugged into a PCI slot in the PC.

.....................................................................

If you run:

sudo lshw -C display

What is output?

Onboard video chips also connect to the PCI bus

On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 17:14 +0000, actionparsnip wrote:
> Your question #130684 on virtualbox-ose in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox-ose/+question/130684
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> actionparsnip proposed the following answer:
> If you run:
>
> sudo lshw -C display
>
> What is output?
>
> Onboard video chips also connect to the PCI bus
>
don@don-desktop:~$ sudo lshw -C display
[sudo] password for don:
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]
       vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=64 mingnt=8
       resources: irq:16 memory:f0000000-f7ffffff(prefetchable)
ioport:e000(size=256) memory:febf0000-febfffff
memory:feb00000-feb1ffff(prefetchable)
don@don-desktop:~$

With System->Administration->Monitor, could you check CPU and memory usage.
It's also possible to install a monitor widget in the upper bar, to see CPU and memory while using Firefox.
It could be also a network issue (as it affects Firefox and Thunderbird, but no other software).
Could you check your upload and download rate? Did you do P2P in parallel ?

CPU usage about 5%, Mem 10%, nothing unusual found here.

Don ..............................

Perhaps its just an X server thing, you could hash up an xorg.conf file. You could also check your RAM using memtest in grub.

1) Did you add many plug-in to Firefox ? Perhaps it's one of them who is root of issue and not Firefox.
2) Another idea, both Firefox and ThunderBird are software of Mozilla Fundation, which, I presume, use same special graphical toolkit. Could you check the behavior of software like e-mail reader and browser from another source. Be carefull with e-mail, if you use POP protocol, messages will be removed from provider database, and you could after have issues to recover them. It could be best to create a temporary account to check e-mail client behavior.