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Browser Running Slower and Slower.....

Bamby

Bamby

New member
I admit I can be a bit of a clueless when it comes to computers. Anyway I've always assumed my computer slowed down dramatically as the day went on because two many people were on line. But here lately it's getting really bad, and it's beginning to lock up and do some really strange things. I ran into a post this morning that describes my problem almost exactly. It's posted below.

I hated IE for years before finally switching to Firefox. It was great until the last couple of updates (I am using 3.6 at the moment).
I am sort of a power surfer and usually have numerous windows and/or tabs open. A few months ago, I noticed a marked slowdown in my system after I had been surfing for an hour or more. It would even crash from time to time, something FF had never done on me.
Upon watching 'memory usage' in Windows Task Manager, there was no doubt that FF was 'loading up' on memory usage and it NEVER dumped it back out. Research showed that a lot of people were struggling with this issue, known as 'memory leakage'.
Firefox forums were loaded with advice that didn't work very well. Much of it was geared at early versions. From what I read, all browsers are capable of this problem and sometimes the solution isn't simple.
A few days ago, I combined several different suggestions and finally hit on what I believe to be a winner. I have pounded the crap out of my machine since then without a single glitch.
My memory usage never loads to levels that it used to. More importantly, as I close windows and tabs, it dumps some of the cache back out. All without a noticeable drop in performance. Yay!
Now I am NO PC tech, just semi-geeky. I did take good notes as I went tho.

If anybody is having problems in this area, I will take the time to write it up here for you. It would take a bit of doing and I am feeling sort of burned out on this subject so I thought I would make the offer before I actually did it.
Click to expand...

Anyway the resolution he found that worked isn't posted, do any of you know how to solve this issue. I sure would like to see my computer work all day like it does when first booted up in the mornings.

PS did you know if you search firefox on this site their are like 145 pages of threads that come up? Nothing like searching a search is there.
 
The post was updated with his solution and I though I'd update here. Thought maybe someone will find it useful. :smile:


I only had a few plugins. None of them were the extra toolbar leeches that get installed when loading software tho. Most were things like Java and I had a Smiley plugin. Nothing too fancy tho. I turned them all off. This did not help at the time.
The REST of the story is to go into the configuration panel. This is very close to the source code so be very careful here. Here is what I did:


Type about:config in the address bar. They will also tell you to be careful. This opens the panel.

- create a new boolean entry config.trim_on_minimize and set it to true. Right click to do this.
- set browser.cache.offline.capacity to a smaller size (the default values are: for 256 MB RAM - 14336, 512 MB RAM - 22528, 1 GB RAM - 32768). A good value to try is 16384. (My 1GB memory WAS set at 520000. I reset it to 220000)
- set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0
- change image.animation_mode to none
NOTE: The last two suggestions did not make much sense to me. I am not sure they actually did any good, but I tried them anyway. The cache and the trim steps are what solved the problem imho.

Go to Tools/Options.
- set the disk cache memory to a low value (I set mine to 50 MB)
- turn off Java
- try to avoid these extensions: Adblock, Fasterfox, IE Tab, Session Saver.
- don't use more than 5 extensions.
-I turned off all plugins and extensions and will turn them back on only as needed.
-Don't forget to close and restart FF after all this.
Click to expand...
 
I appreciate this post. I upgraded to Firefox 3.60 a few days ago. Twice now it has bogged down my machine after a long day's surfing. Tried the fixes yesterday. One question, though: When I go to Tool/Options, I find no place set disk cache memory. Where is that? As the poster said, that sounds like it could be important.

I also did not disable Java. One of my favorite sites, the NOAA weather report uses it for radar looping.

Guess I will know in a few days if what I did makes any difference.
 
Drat, I just upgraded to firefox 3.6 also. I have seen issues with firefox using up all system resources at times. All I do is restart firefox or reboot. Both fix the problem but not the issue. At some point firefox will again become a resource hog. But, I have to admit to normally running 20+ windows ....many times more than 50 windows.

I have the choice of dealing with IE lockups or Firefox resource usage. Firefox seems the lessor of the two evils to me. No perfect solution but a very workable one.
 
I only see the extreme resource use when the wife has been on facebook. I just kill the process and run Glary utility and all is well again.
 
I am using Firefox version 3.5.2 and it works well. This was a complain with my friend and because of that reason I delayed to upgrade my firefox version. It seems like I am luck that I have not upgrade to latest version.
 
If anything, Firefox 3.6 is working worse for me now. An hour or so of surfing this morning led to another lockup. It has been doing it for the last few days. The other day a window popped up when I initiated the program stating the something related to Java was causing instability problems and included a box to disable the function. I disabled it and saw no difference in performance. The only way I have found to prevent lockups is to shut the program down every couple of hours. Is there a way to revert to the previous version?
 
ghautz said:
If anything, Firefox 3.6 is working worse for me now. An hour or so of surfing this morning led to another lockup. It has been doing it for the last few days. The other day a window popped up when I initiated the program stating the something related to Java was causing instability problems and included a box to disable the function. I disabled it and saw no difference in performance. The only way I have found to prevent lockups is to shut the program down every couple of hours. Is there a way to revert to the previous version?
Click to expand...

Here you go:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html
 
OhioTC18 said:
No, Vista Home Premium
Click to expand...

Maybe that is related to the problem. My machine has all the ram XP will support and no shortage of hard drive space. I think I will see about reverting to version 3.5 for a while, at least until I hear the problem has been resolved.
 
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