Can anyone tell me why firefox is killing my laptop?

chris321

chris321

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This has been happening more and more recently, it starts off fine, but after firefox has been left up for a bit, and has a couple of tabs open, my computer completely bogs down, and refuses to do anything.

If I have a look at task manager, firefox.exe is using something like 600mb of memory, which is a fair bit really! As soon as I shut down firefox, everything gets back up to speed again! I was just wondering if anyone knows why this is happening, or what I can do to avoid it. It's really irritating as I don't like using IE, and firefox is set up exactly how I like it!

:help:


Thanks a lot!

Chris
 
Try turning off your plugins to double check it's not one of them causing the issue. Having said that I'm running a "clean" version of FF 3.5 and that gets sluggish at times too although since I installed an update yesterday it seems to have improved.
 
I've just turned off all the plugins, and it's updating to the lastest version of 3.5, and I'll see if it's any better. I'm a bit dissapointed to be honest, I've always preferred firefox as it was much faster than IE, which really was sluggish, but now it seems to be the other way around.

I don't understand why it uses more and more memory over time though, and it seems it's not just me this is happening to!
 
I find IE8 much better
 
I have the same problem, when I leave it for a while it goes off and does its own thing and uses all the processing power. When I start using it again it calms down. It was even worse when I was running Norton AV, but has been a lot better with AVG.
 
I don't understand why it uses more and more memory over time though, and it seems it's not just me this is happening to
Click to expand...
Memory leak, some bit(s) of the code aren't returning memory to the system once it's finished with. An all too common problem unfortunately, damn code monkeys :lol:
 
At the risk of starting a mines better than yours debate, have you tried Safari..?

The latest version is now on a par with IE and Firefox....
Or chrome but that is not quite as good..!
 
Firefox has always had memory leak issues and they keep saying it is fixed and it keeps on doing it.

Ultimately it's probably something you'll just have to put up with.

Obvious alternatives if you desire are Opera and Chrome, though neither are as customisable as Firefox they are very complete browsers and work well. Safari on PC is a waste of time IMO, nasty thing.
 
pxl8 said:
damn code monkeys :lol:
Click to expand...

There are monkeys in my laptop?! No wonder is running slowly!

Cheers guys, I thought there was something going wrong that I could fix, now I know it's something I've just got to deal with! Ah well, life goes on, I'll just have to keep re-starting it every now and again. Cheers for the help, I just hope they get it sorted soon!

Chris
 
I have used FF more quite a few years now on various laptops and desktops and have not really had a problem with it.

There have been some add-ons that I have installed in the past that have caused the browser to crash on occasions but I just uninstalled them.

My browser is open all day but just minimized to the systray, exactly they same as I do with TBird.
 
FireFox isn't what it used to be, I find it unstable and sluggish compared to Chrome these days. Just a shame Chrome doesn't have an adblock plugin :(
 
Just for comparison, I've currently got 140 tabs open across five windows in Opera, and am about 20 tabs away from a lockup.
 
Safari 4 for Windows is actually quite nice, quite snappy and the features aren't too bad either.
Contrary to what some people here claim, I've never had a problem with memory leaks in Firefox - either I haven't noticed them or they just didn't happen. All that with number of tabs ranging from 1 to over 50.
If you have over 50 tabs opened, you should reconsider whether they're worth being open, as you most likely don't need most of them.

That said, I did tune my Firefox to my liking and I block ads, as I never click them anyway and they are a bother in general.

EDIT: It's also a good idea to clean your temporary files and cache once in a while. If you have lots of files created and deleted, then the filesystem gets fragmented rather quickly.
 
I had great problesm with Firefox taking ages to load up. If you tsrted it in safe mode (you can do this from start>all progams>Mozilla Firefox/Safe Mode)it tended to start quicker. The problem was conflict with one or more add ons.

IE8 is ok but I'm not that happy with the security arrangements and it has some compatability issues with some web sites. I had to rebuild part of one of mine because the slide show stopped working in IE8.

Same is true of Opera, some web sites it has issues with

Perhaps you could take alook at these pages there might be some assistance there.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Firefox_1.html
 
Slapo said:
Contrary to what some people here claim, I've never had a problem with memory leaks in Firefox - either I haven't noticed them or they just didn't happen.
Click to expand...

They don't happen to everyone and it doesn't happen to the same extent with all versions.

A couple of days ago it moved me to 3.5.2 and now it's sat using 725MB of RAM with 8 tabs open (mostly forums +facebook+tvguide) and slowly climbing.

If I leave it for a few more hours it will no doubt hit 1GB.

[edit - killed the process and restarted and the same 8 tabs are using 175MB]
 
Well, I've surprised myself by moving to IE8 at work. Shame it took Microsoft so long to get it there, but it finally seems to work reasonably well.

Safari on the Mac at home, of course. ;)
 
pxl8 said:
Memory leak, some bit(s) of the code aren't returning memory to the system once it's finished with. An all too common problem unfortunately, damn code monkeys :lol:
Click to expand...

As stated, this has been an issue with Firefox for quite some time.

Best light browser i've used is Chrome. very quick and easy to use.
 
1 day after my Firefox updated to 3.5.2 I had a major problem.

Links in the Google search results were being hijacked and sometimes would come up with one of those fake virus scan pages.

I spent hours trying to figure this out using everyone of the different spyware removers you can think of, followed many lengthy proceedures on spyware forums but nothing solved it.

I posted on the mozilla forum only to be told that it is spyware :razz: and to use an anti spyware application, not very helpful at all.

This is was not happening on IE7, so I thought that it must be time for a change.

I downloaded IE8 to check that out, seems nice and all but really, really slow to load a page and for me it was hard to refrain from typing search requests in the address bar having used Firefox for many years, plus the almost daily need to update Microsoft software due to security issues, especially IE puts me off a bit.

So I downloaded Google Chrome, I did try this out in the past when it first came out and thought then that it was good only I was fine with Firefox at that time.
I know chrome is not as polished as other browsers out there and lacks certain features at the moment but I am really pleased with it's performance.
It loads a page extremely fast, I have gone for the latest Beta which give the option for themes, (although these are in limited supply at this time). It imported all my Firefox bookmarks and Passwords without a hitch.
The other major lacking in chrome is an RSS feeder but I have started using Google reader for the momnent until the feature is added to the browser or a plugin is made.

Oh, and no, the click hijacking does not happen in chrome either.
 
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