Firefox Constantly (not Responding)

[Spoonman]

I think a lot of it is to do with Firefox itself (or adverts on the pages), it happens a lot to me, every time it happens i hit Ctrl/shft/j it brings up the error console of FF..... and sure as shit, the last error displayed relates to the webpage when it didnt respond.

[welo]

Any response from the OP?

[torrenova]

Reading around the subject, the only constant which keeps coming up is the issue of AVG / Zone Alarm. I had binned ZA a while ago due to issues with utorrent and other stuff.

I accept that there may be some historic confusion in what is running, security wise, but nothing gets through, the system works and though now is probably a very good time for an overhaul, the issue here is FF running daft amounts of RAM.

I never turn the PC off. Just flick the screen off when not using it for a long time. Reboot when requested or when it feels like it is hanging way too often.

[welo]

I accept that there may be some historic confusion in what is running, security wise, but nothing gets through, the system works and though now is probably a very good time for an overhaul, the issue here is FF running daft amounts of RAM.

Since some Antivirus software also implement web security features the vast number of antivirus and security software running simultaneously might as well have something to do with your Firefox' consuming too much memory. That's just a guess though since not many people run 3 antivirus guards simultaneously (since everybody recommends against it.) so this problem might not be well documented on the net.

I remember many problem reports of users when a previous installed antivirus software was not removed cleanly from the system before installing another product (Norton and McAfee was well-known for troubles of that kind).

However, I agree that there might be as well no connection at all between your security software setup and firefox.

One more thing about memory consumption. Have a read on wikipedia about the difference between commit charge and working set size. Commit charge usually means physical memory usage plus page-file usage, working set size means the physical memory usage. A 'mem usage' column in the task manager usually shows the 'working set'. Since your listing says something about 'commit' it might be the commit charge. What column is your Vista task manager showing? There is also a difference between 'private bytes' and 'public bytes', the latter including modules/libraries in memory that are shared between processes.

I wonder whether Vista shows the commit charge or the working set by default?

Whatever... I see that you were looking for more straight forward answers. I think many good points for troubleshooting were mentioned in this thread. Disabling addons, using Firefox Safe Mode or Firefox portable edition, system restarts, etc. Up to you whether to invest some time for troubleshooting or not

welo

[goldmine]

I am having this kind of problem as well everytime I log into some website like ibcbet website with the firefox.

[torrenova]

..........Whatever... I see that you were looking for more straight forward answers. I think many good points for troubleshooting were mentioned in this thread. Disabling addons, using Firefox Safe Mode or Firefox portable edition, system restarts, etc. Up to you whether to invest some time for troubleshooting or not

welo

The thing is that I don't want to disable add ons or use it in a safe mode or as a portable edition or even to have to do more restarts than I wish. I remember at work phoning IT when there was a problem and they would always say, "have you turned it off and on again". I don't see that as a solution (certainly not blaming you) but I want a solution, not having to drive my 150mph car at 45pmh because we cannot work out why it overheats ?

Same as I don't want to be altering the inner workings of the beast. I am an end user. I'll happily get into the deepest codes in VBA but I expect the PC to just "work", straight out of the box.

[welo]

The thing is that I don't want to disable add ons or use it in a safe mode or as a portable edition or even to have to do more restarts than I wish. I remember at work phoning IT when there was a problem and they would always say, "have you turned it off and on again". I don't see that as a solution (certainly not blaming you) but I want a solution, not having to drive my 150mph car at 45pmh because we cannot work out why it overheats ?

Same as I don't want to be altering the inner workings of the beast. I am an end user. I'll happily get into the deepest codes in VBA but I expect the PC to just "work", straight out of the box.

I am Software Developer, too, and during the past years I've become more and more annoyed with the common attitude in IT business and especially in my own domain, software development, that a software can never be error-free. Well, whereas this is true to a certain point due to the complexity of computers/software in general and the vast variety of different setups and configurations of computer systems (bla bla, I hate hearing myself talk like this ), I personally believe that the industry (and the consumers) have come to accept too easily that something is not working.

Whatever, this topic is far too complex to discuss here, just know that I share your 'the PC should just work' attitude. Unfortunately, the industry is nowhere close to that. And - here I go again defending that 'never error-free' mantra argh! - Firefox is a typical piece of software that is very vulnerable to software errors sneaking in due to its addon architecture.

1. Addons are developed by people outside the Mozilla team. Hence quality assurance does not include those addons (at least not to the same extent as the core code).

2. Addons are mostly developed by coders for free. Limited resources often mean limited quality assurance. Open Source Software outweighs this disadvantage by its community that actively helps fixing problems

3. The large number of available addons is a huge advantage of Firefox, but opens the door to errors arising due to unforeseen interactions or incompatibilities between different addons.

So my point is that Firefox is not resource-hogging by design. It obviously has something to do with your specific setup or usage pattern. Looking at your Task Manager listing I assume that you are a user who likes to try out new stuff and installs quite a lot of software and probably also Firefox addons. If you want a PC that 'just works' this is surely not the strategy to get there. The problems you have is NOT due to an obvious coding error in one of the apps that you use, but probably due to the numbers of applications/addons interacting with each other.

Just think about somebody tweaking his car and engine all about, and later when a problem comes up bringing the car in for repair and expecting the mechanic to look at the car for a few minutes and saying, 'Ah, I see, here this screw has become loose!' (Well, since we are on a message board the analogy would actually be that this person phones the mechanic and describes the problem to him on the phone).

Btw nobody expects you to switch permanently to Firefox portable, or disable all your addons forever, this were just suggestions to troubleshoot your problem, so you can later fix it by maybe disabling only the one addon that caused the memory hogging.

And as you posted here on this board we all assumed that your intention is to troubleshoot the problem yourself, otherwise you would probably go to a professional and pay him to fix it.

And you are not 'just an end-user'. Installing various antivirus software products and multiple Firefox addons clearly makes you fall out of that category

welo

[torrenova]

Thanks for that reply. I agree with most of it.

I remember writing complex VBA structures for work and then having to debug but at the same time knowing that the best thing, to start from the beginning, was never going to happen and I'd just have to work around any issues.

I did it once, in BASIC. I wrote a lottery program for my mother's old BBC Micro with some graphics and RND functions putting coloured balls on screen with random numbers in them and I did that off the top of my head, not cobbling together pieces of programs I had used before which had served me well in previous projects. But for most work stuff, you are adapting something which already exists rather than developing something new so I do see how conflicts arise.

I would rather not do anything or add anything but people develop things to make life easier. I hesitate before downloading something but I am educated that we need protection from the baddies out their in cyber space so I reluctantly set up programs to do battle with them and zap their attacks.

One problem being an end user is that when you ask for help, you are often offered multiple options by well meaning and kind people replying to your request for assistance but you are sceptical because what they suggest takes you outside your comfort zone and there is no way back if something goes wrong. I suppose I just wanted a quick fix as I can't get involved in reinventing the wheel.

[welo]

One problem being an end user is that when you ask for help, you are often offered multiple options by well meaning and kind people replying to your request for assistance but you are sceptical because what they suggest takes you outside your comfort zone and there is no way back if something goes wrong. I suppose I just wanted a quick fix as I can't get involved in reinventing the wheel.

And I guess it's good to be sceptical! You will find many posts on that forum where during the ongoing of the thread it turned out that the person was following instructions to accomplish things that were way much beyond his/her level of knowledge. And at the same time you will find others who are sometimes too helpful advising people to do things that might as well lead to disaster if followed by inexperienced users.

However, when it comes to Firefox and its addons there are safe ways of finding the culprit. You can easily disable an addon temporarily (without uninstalling it) from the Tools/Addons/Extensions menu. The addons that are listed there are all user-installed addons that provide additional features, no core component is listed there (just stay away from the 'plugin' tab). Disabling addons will not render Firefox unusable and will only disable some additional features that an addon provides. If you really can't live without a feature for a couple of days while you are troubleshooting then you can easily re-enable the addon from the same menu dialog. Just a view clicks, restart Firefox and everything is back to normal

See what I did just a couple of weeks ago when my Firefox got more and more sluggish: I disabled all of my addons at once (but did not uninstall them), and kept using the PC as before. I would then notice that a certain feature was missing which I really wanted (and needed), hence go to the Addons dialog and re-enable only this addon. So after some days I re-enabled some of those addons again, but some that I had only installed to try them out and had rarely used stayed disabled. Well, some I had already forgotten about and couldn't even remember what they were for, and others I had used so seldom that I decided not to use them anymore to make Firefox less bloated.

This way I trimmed down my Firefox in both memory footprint and speed (startup speed and responsiveness).

If this goes to far for you there is an even simpler way to see how Firefox without all those addons 'feels' and performs: Firefox Safe-Mode. This has nothing to do with starting Windows in 'Safe-Mode' which you might have heared about. It just affects Firefox and what it basically does is disable all addons, themes and reset all toolbars to its defaults. But wait, all of this is only temporarily until you restart Firefox, which will set everything back to normal!

While you are in Safe Mode, your extensions and themes will be disabled, and any toolbar customizations will be reverted back to their defaults. These changes are not permanent - when you leave Safe Mode and start Firefox up normally, your extensions, themes, and settings will return to the state they were in before you entered Safe Mode. source: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

You will be surprised how fast Firefox will start and I guess memory consumption will be a lot lower, too.

1. Close all open Firefox Windows
   
2. go to Windows Start Menu -> Mozilla Firefox -> Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode).
   
3. A dialog box will appear where you have to click 'continue in Safe Mode'.
   
4. done
   

When you are done just close all open Firefox Windows and restart Firefox normally. Everything will be back to normal.

It's OK if you are busy doing other things and don't want to follow up on this, I promise I'll shut up

welo