After being open for a while (with several tabs) Firefox becomes generally unresponsive and stops playing sound - videos will still play, but no sound.

Question

This problem has only begun happening recently. I commonly keep my Firefox open overnight with websites like rainymood.com or grooveshark.com playing, as well as several other tabs including but not limited to Facebook, Reddit, and YouTube. Sometimes, after several hours/days of not restarting Firefox or my computer, Firefox begins to become unresponsive - that is to say, pages take a long time to load, opening new tabs is difficult for the browser, and videos will take up to 30 seconds to begin playing. In addition to this, sound will stop playing; if I begin a YouTube video, after the initial period of excessive loading, the video will play, but without any audio. Also, websites such as rainymood.com and grooveshark, even Facebook, will stop making sound.
Note that this is different from a flash plugin crash - when flash crashes, both audio and video become inaccessible and a simple refresh or restart of Firefox will solve the problem. But what is happening here is different; if I refresh the tab, nothing changes, and even if I restart Firefox, it opens again the same way until I restart my computer completely.
Also of note: I have had, in the past, this same thing happen but rainymood.com continued playing, however no other tabs would make sound. The problem is sporadic and I'm not sure where to begin. Also, sometimes this is only a Firefox-specific problem, meaning other programs on my computer can make sounds, but sometimes this problem makes my entire computer stop making sounds, except for Ventrilo, which works but is also unresponsive at first.

Answer 1

You can also try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
*Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
*https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/09/hardware-acceleration/