Firefox Constantly (not Responding)

[torrenova]

I'm running Firefox 3.5.6 and I'm having very regular crashes with it "not responding" requiring me to cancel it through Task Manager. It just "hangs" and the page goes opaque.

I'm using Vista 64 bit Home Premium.

It can happen when other programs are running (usually just Excel, Word etc. - all legit with license for Office 2007) or just when running alone. It does tend to happen after Firefox has been running for some time rather than just starting up but not always.

I don't really have a clue where to start and any speculation on my part would only be a guess. Any ideas ?

[Beggar]

Vista + 64 bit... But are these always the same sites where you have the problem? If so you could download the

Portable Firefox and make an install to test a clean version without damaging your existing one - install in a new directory.

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

If it works there without the crashes then perhaps add-ons might cause a problem.

Check that you have the latest Flash and Java.

[torrenova]

Vista + 64 bit... But are these always the same sites where you have the problem? If so you could download the

Portable Firefox and make an install to test a clean version without damaging your existing one - install in a new directory.

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

If it works there without the crashes then perhaps add-ons might cause a problem.

Check that you have the latest Flash and Java.

I have the latest Flash and Java. The only constant site I have open is Gmail but it never seems to be that site where it crashes. More often on sites where I have been away from the PC for a while and returned.

[astral]

Check your addons.

I have a problem wheh I shutdown FireFox, it disappears off the bar at the bottom,

but in fact is still running in memory. Cnrtl+Alt+Delete shows it, sometimes with vast

amounts of memory allocated.

I have not worked out why, yet, but I do have a number of addons.

I must try stopping one at a time to find out the culprit.

[torrenova]

Check your addons.

I have a problem wheh I shutdown FireFox, it disappears off the bar at the bottom,

but in fact is still running in memory. Cnrtl+Alt+Delete shows itm sometimes with vast

amounts of memory allocated.

I have not worked out why, yet, but I do have a number of addons.

I must try stopping one at a time to find out the culprit.

Good call but I don't get why as surely something incompatible would act up every time and straight away after relaunch. If I installed a new one and then it crashed I could see the connection.

I put Iconix on my Gmail account but that did interfere and locked out Gmail so I uninstalled it. However, the locking up occurred before that and afterwards so it cannot be that. I do have some add ons running but, like you I guess, am loathed to remove them.

[londonthai]

I have this same problem since the summer, and from my experience it's a gmail causing it - so I open gmail in chrome or IE and do the surfing in firefox. You can as well to run the older version of gmail and see if there is an improvement - helped me, but the older version is not as good as the newer one.

you might delete firefox and download another version or completely switch to chrome (I know it's not as good as firefox yet, but there are already a few hundred add ons and more are coming up)

[torrenova]

I've been running Gmail since forever but it was this summer that it started, perhaps 4 or 5 months ago. Gmail constantly updates though so I'd have no chance to recognise when or if etc. I might try Gmail in Chrome tomorrow. Cheers.

[lopburi3]

I have to use Gmail on Chrome to get the calendar function to work normally. Also have to disable a number of add-ons to keep Firefox from eating up memory (going up to 500 megs at times). If that happens will freeze at some point as no memory available. Check the memory usage of Firefox with task manager and if it gets into the 200+ range try killing one add-on/tab at a time to try and isolate the cause.

[torrenova]

I have to use Gmail on Chrome to get the calendar function to work normally. Also have to disable a number of add-ons to keep Firefox from eating up memory (going up to 500 megs at times). If that happens will freeze at some point as no memory available. Check the memory usage of Firefox with task manager and if it gets into the 200+ range try killing one add-on/tab at a time to try and isolate the cause.

I was under the (seemingly incorrect) impression that when Firefox moved to 3.5 I think, the days of memory hugging were over. I've just looked at mine and it is chewing up 583mb which is way higher than in pre 3.5 days when it would hit 170/250.

I have 4GB RAM

In Resource Monitor, it says 79% Used Physical Memory. Is that 79% of 4GB ? or anything to do with virtual memory ?

iexplore.exe is hogging 138mb as well and I don't have explorer open ?

Quite a few other things such as svchost and searchindexer which all seem to check out as ok but are hogging 200mb each

Do I just need even more RAM ? I have lots of slots and RAM is not that expensive. I guess with 64 bit i can just go mad on RAM ?

[torrenova]

Firefox now hogging 722mb and rising !

[Beggar]

I have a problem wheh I shutdown FireFox, it disappears off the bar at the bottom,

but in fact is still running in memory. Cnrtl+Alt+Delete shows itm sometimes with vast

amounts of memory allocated.

I have not worked out why, yet, but I do have a number of addons.

I must try stopping one at a time to find out the culprit.

Often this is caused by Java applications. They hang or unload very slowly. Check your Java installation. The addons could be a problem too. I have jumps when I play back flash videos. I tried to find out which addon causes the problem by stopping one at a time. Was an endless job with no result. If I switch off all of them then there are no jumps. But then I can use Chrome. Firefox gets more and more problems with every new release I have the feeling.

[bendejo]

If you want to pursue the possibility that it has something to do with add-ons, download yet another add-on called FEBE to back-up your current FF configuration; an alternative is to copy your FF settings directory to elsewhere. Then do a complete zap of your FF installation, reboot, and re-install. Someone above suggests using Portable FF, good idea.

Start investigating FF performance from this clean state with no add-ons or plugins. Patiently add add-ons/plugins one by one and monitor the performance. As you do so, check the settings for each, being especially mindful of the ones that require memory allocation or write to disk.

And now for a wild guess: I'd say it has something to do with 64-bit Vista and Flash.

There is something off in the FF add-on screening process. Whenever I update FF, even in the minor releases, I'll get a message saying at least one of my add-ons is not compatible with the new release. Restarting a few times will correct this.

Earlier this year my laptop died and I bought a new one. Much to my surprise I learned it would not run XP, so I had to go to Vista (yeah, I succeeded in making it run XP with some hacks, but the device driver stuff proved too big a pain in the arse). I then went on to Win7, a vast improvement over Vista; my theory is that Win7 is what Vista was supposed to be, but it wasn't ready on time.

I suggest you update to Win7 32-bit. I could be running 64-bit but I think it isn't ready.

[Abrak]

Basically, I ran into this same problem about 4 months ago.

I would open firefox and it would take up about 70mb space (under task manager processes). After an hour and a half it would be up 600mb and would 'stop/intermittent' responding. To be honest, I am not sure why this should be a problem as I have 3GB of RAM and normally 'everything else' wouldnt take up more than another 700mb. I also found that you couldnt close firefox except through the task manager.

I did two things that 'solved' the problem but I have no idea which was the most important. I installed a 'utility' (as opposed to an add on) called 'firefox ultimate organizer.' Since installing under processes, firefox never uses more than 20mb (and very rarely over 10mb). The utilility is usually under 1mb but occasionally spikes to 4 or 5mb. (Just checked - utility 800K and firefox 5mb - I never got firefox anywhere near this level before. Explorer seems to be using 15mb and isnt even open.) (Be aware, that the installation of the utility includes a ticked box with a 'install this wonderful toolbar' or something - which needs to be unchecked.)

Here is a short 'youtube' on it. You dont need to download a .rar and it is free (apart from the adaware tick box in setup.)

((CAUTION - see below messages before downloading or using this software - lopburi3))

The other thing I did at the same time is to uninstall an add-on called 'IE-tab'. I was told this suffers/ed from a 'memory leak'. Dont really know what that is but it didnt sound good. (IE-tab is a very popular add-on that enables you to look at internet pages using explorer.) I suspect that something was causing a leak as firefox started at 150mb and then would simply go on rising.)

Anyways no problems since.

[Gary A]

Firefox now hogging 722mb and rising !

722 MB isn't that much when you have 4 GB. I have 3 GB and and even with FF running the total usage is only 32 percent. That leaves quite a surplus. I have a disk monitor that is using 34 MB and all it tells me is the HD temperature.

[welo]

The other thing I did at the same time is to uninstall an add-on called 'IE-tab'. I was told this suffers/ed from a 'memory leak'. Dont really know what that is but it didnt sound good. (IE-tab is a very popular add-on that enables you to look at internet pages using explorer.) I suspect that something was causing a leak as firefox started at 150mb and then would simply go on rising.)

'memory leak' means that elements/objects in the browser are not cleaned up/removed correctly and remain in memory even after they are not used any more.

E.g. after leaving one webpage by browsing to the next all the objects/elements from the first website should be removed from memory since they are no longer of use, however, if something goes wrong (usually due to bad programming or a bug in the program) some elements remain in memory and are never cleaned up (only when the application process is terminated that is the program quits). Over the time this can cause a significant increase in memory usage.

OP says he sees iexplore.exe even though he didn't start internet explorer. IETab might load iexplore.exe as a seperate process.

welo

[astral]

I installed a 'utility' (as opposed to an add on) called 'firefox ultimate organizer.'

Did you mean Firefox Ultimate OPTIMIZER??

Googling show both programmes and Avira flags both as a virus when downloaded.

[apetley]

I installed a 'utility' (as opposed to an add on) called 'firefox ultimate organizer.'

Did you mean Firefox Ultimate OPTIMIZER??

Googling show both programmes and Avira flags both as a virus when downloaded.

I have Optimizer installed and it really does speedup Firefox, nowhere near so memory hungry.

No security issues flagged by AVG.

[lopburi3]

The link for direct download is listed as an unsafe web site by WOT in Firefox and blocked - have removed hot links from above two messages.

[astral]

I have Optimizer installed and it really does speedup Firefox, nowhere near so memory hungry.

No security issues flagged by AVG.

I ignore the warnings from Avira and installed.

There were two viruses MSA.exe and C.exe.

[bendejo]

There was some scandal (opps, I mean misunderstanding) some months back where MS came up with a FF add-on that opened up some security compromises, like this http://www.zdnetasia.com/techguide/securit...62055736,00.htm

But this thread caused me to check out my own FF installation, and it turned out I was running close to 300Mb. I wasn't worried because I have 3 Gb of RAM, but still, I disabled a few add-ons and reduced it a bit.

[torrenova]

My Physical Memory is hovering around 73% - what does this mean (I have 4GB RAM)

CPU Usage is around 25% with peaks upwards - Intel Quad Core

[Beggar]

Just call up the Task Manager and look what is using the CPU and the memory. Sort first according the CPU and then according the memory. So you can see what is going on. Anything else is guesswork. If you are not sure what the processes mean just post a screen copy here so that we can look at them. And let us know if you use a swap file. Did you restart the system? I know people restarting the system once a year or so. This can create problems too.

To give you an idea of my system - I have 46 processes running and Firefox open with 17 tabs. Used mem is 743 MB. I don't even use a swap file. Okay - it is WinXP 32 bit and the numbers do not mean so much. But if your system really eats up 73 % of 4 GB then you should know for what. So check with the Task Manager.

[torrenova]

I seem to have about 107 processes running of which 100 or so use up around 1GB RAM

The top large usages are:

Image Commit (KB)

firefox.exe 980,988

svchost.exe (LocalSystemNetworkRestricted) 182,496

SearchIndexer.exe 132,472

TeaTimer.exe 124,804

svchost.exe (netsvcs) 118,736

SmartMenu.exe 86,676

Vid.exe 83,244

avguard.exe 82,592

HPAdvisor.exe 76,420

avgchsva.exe 73,080

EXCEL.EXE 63,588

ashWebSv.exe 58,976

Skype.exe 54,676

svchost.exe (NetworkService) 51,636

CLMLSvc.exe 48,940

ashServ.exe 47,824

explorer.exe 45,612

dwm.exe 42,900

WINWORD.EXE 36,312

msnmsgr.exe 36,268

HPHC_Service.exe 34,372

SMSvcHost.exe 31,940

Total 2,494,552

Other (87 processes) 692,612

[cdnvic]

No security issues flagged by AVG.

It has a nasty reputation for that.

[cdnvic]

Just start firefox in safe mode and see if the problem persists. Completely uninstall Java before updating it again.

[Beggar]

Further up you write that the memory consumption is around 75 % of 4 GB and according the other post with the Task Manager it is about 1 GB. Perhaps I did not understand this correctly.

Some questions:

Do you start the computer new at least every day or do you start it from stand by or hibernation?

Do you use Firefox 32 bit or 64 bit?

What is the memory consumption of Firefox if you start it fresh without any tab open?

[beano2274]

I have Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 and it uses around 117,000 to 118,000K.

Also all of your svchosts seem to be excessive compared to mine, but am using 32 bit

Edited January 2, 2010 by beano2274

[beano2274]

Also for information the group that developed Firefox Optimizer do not offer it anymore for download, they seem to have had problems with it. Here is a link to their page, sorry it is in German

http://www.computerbase.de/news/software/b...illa_optimizer/

Seems to have caused problems with other browsers too.

[welo]

Your system is way to bloated

On my Win7 64bit I have 53 processes running in total ('show processes from all users' enabled).

A few comments on your listing:

• Do you have both AVG, Avira and Avast installed!?!? avguard.exe is Avira, avgchsva.exe is AVG, ashwebsv.exe is AVAST. Running 3 antivirus guards at the same time is surely not a good idea and is enough to completely mess up your system - you don't need firefox to do that.
  
• TeaTimer.exe should be a Spybot process, but why does it take up that much memory? I've read that it is some protection mechanism similiar to UAC, are you sure you need that?
  
• Your top 10 processes use too much memory IMHO. On my system SearchIndexer.exe is 20MB, all svchost processes 150MB (you: 340). Of course memory allocation is a tricky topic, which I don't know much about , and I have absolutely no experience with Vista (maybe the memory bloating is just one reason why so many people hate it).
  Did you use the default Vista task manager to get the listing? There are different memory related properties, only one will give you the actual memory allocation of a process. However, I assume that Vista displays the correct column by default.
  

Your biggest problem is that you run too many security related programs, or, that your computer is heavily infected with trojans/viruses disguising themselves as those programs (not too smart though to use names from different antivirus programs )

welo

[thetravellingcat]

unrelated but somebody might find it useful:

Set Firefox Portable as the Default Browser in Windows XP