Over the last few years I have been a great fan of Firefox but this last week my notebook frequently grinds to a halt or just plain freezes up when using it.

I have just installed Google Chrome and suddenly my browsing experience is all roses again so I'm happy but at a loss to explain why Firefox should suddenly become such a drag on my notebook.

Any comment would be welcome.

Andy.

Probably due to plug-ins.

I stopped using Firefox ~ 9 months ago as it was always hanging (multiple, unstoppable 'firefox.exe' processes running), wouldn't close, took forever to start-up or would hang, uses a ton of memory with creep and cpu. Can't believe anyone uses it anymore.

how old is your notebook? what version of firefox are you running? I'm running firefox, lots of plug-ins, absolutely no memory or cpu problems or firefox stability issues.........

I stopped using Firefox ~ 9 months ago as it was always hanging (multiple, unstoppable 'firefox.exe' processes running), wouldn't close, took forever to start-up or would hang, uses a ton of memory with creep and cpu. Can't believe anyone uses it anymore.

create a batch file to task kill firefox after closing it

I stopped using Firefox ~ 9 months ago as it was always hanging (multiple, unstoppable 'firefox.exe' processes running), wouldn't close, took forever to start-up or would hang, uses a ton of memory with creep and cpu. Can't believe anyone uses it anymore.

create a batch file to task kill firefox after closing it

It's like putting plaster on a broken bone... or to put you head in the sandbox when you have headache...

It could be a Firefox add-on causing it. I had the same problem recently with an add-on called Ghostery which was very memory hungry, so had to remove it.

You could try disabling your ad-ons one at a time to see if one of them is the culprit.

Edited September 3, 201015 yr by katana

I had similar problems with FF 3.6+ and found a solution (work-around) at:

http://www.technogad...er-exe-process/

Do a Google search on plugin-container.exe for other comments on this issue.

Agree on the plug-in comment. I went through my many plug-ins and cleaned them up...then FF was working all chirpy again!

Thanks for all the good advice, much appreciated.

I may give FF another go sometime but after installing Google Chrome I am growing to like that alot!

I think it has just gradually bloated out. I don't use addons but still had increasing headaches with it (mainly on my laptop). I recently got fed up and reluctantly tried Chrome again. It has improved a lot and has become my main browser, although I still use Firefox occasionally for the odd Chrome-unfriendly site.

I also had all the above problems with FF3+. Sometimes using up to 900k and becoming slow to use. I upgraded to FF4 (beta) and all those problems have gone. I think this is by far their best version yet. (don't know if all addons will work but ABP does!)

I had similar problems with FF 3.6+ and found a solution (work-around) at:

http://www.technogad...er-exe-process/

Do a Google search on plugin-container.exe for other comments on this issue.

Same here a month or two ago.

moved on to chrome. all ff plugins i use are available on chrome, looks better (imo), faster, less resource intensive.

it was fun while it lasted, ff.

There are certain FF plug-ins I don't use very often (like gspace and FEBE), so I disable them but do not uninstall, and this makes a world of difference performance-wise. Just enable and restart when you need them. There was one novelty plug-in I was using (I think it was ani-weather) that really slowed things down, got rid it.

I'm not too keen on using a google browser, considering all the stuff I've done to my FF installation to keep off the like of google analytics and such, for the same reason I don't use google DNS.

I use FireFox with over 100 add-ons. Firefox 3.6.8 was starting to behave like the OP mentioned. I just upgraded to FireFox 3.6.9. It does seem to be a lot faster now. It's too early to tell if the memory is being consumed and not released. Nor if it is crashing anymore. But it is a major improvement.

According to the release notes. Major bug fixes were made dealing with memory consumption and crash problems.