Firefox 38.0.1 a memory-gobbling abomination?

[450125]

I've been a loyal FF user for more than a decade, liking or disliking this or that feature with each new release, but pretty seamlessly going with the flow.

But in the week or two I've had 38.0.1, I've had numerous problems at home and at work.

At work, google maps will lock the browser up and I have to force-quit it, even if it's the only tab I have open and launch it from a fresh boot of Windows.

At home, I'll notice the browser eventually lag over the course of a day, and then look in the task manager and the memory usage keeps climbing, 1 gig of memory and ever higher. I have 8 gigs of memory on the home computer, and I don't check this type of thing much, but the browser performance is so obviously compromised that I checked and noticed this.

Even turning off hw acceleration, a popularly-suggested fix for this type of problem, hasn't helped at home.

Have others here noticed something similar? And are there known fixes for the browser declining performance I see at home, or the google maps lockup I see at work?

 

[MoxieMomma]

Hi:

Most Fx problems originate in the user's profile (extensions, temp files, corruption, security software conflict, etc.), not in the program itself.

I have not personally noticed any sort of memory leak or problems with Google Maps, but each computer is unique.

Here are some links with helpful advice for standard troubleshooting and diagnostics:

Mozilla Safe Mode
Firefox - Standard Diagnostic
Firefox - Fix slowness, crashing and other problems

Hope this helps,

 

[RolandJS]

I rolled my FF back to 33, now 36. Rollback might be the answer. Question: which earlier version of FF gave you no problems?

 

[450125]

I rolled my FF back to 33, now 36. Rollback might be the answer. Question: which earlier version of FF gave you no problems?

There have been a version or two here or there that gave me headaches - and from google it was easy to tell that they gave most of the free world user community the same headaches.

But pretty much, ever FF version I've had, that has worked fine for others, has worked fine for me too.

I'm sorry for a stupid question here, but (1) where do I find the rollback version I want (38 or 37.x would have been fine), and (2) how do I then prevent FF from automatically re-installing 38.0.1 back over it?

 

[MoxieMomma]

Hi:

I respectfully disagree with that approach.
Rolling back to an older, outdated program version is probably not a good idea, at least for most users.

There are 2 major problems with that approach:

• First and foremost: Security
• Doing so is likely to further "break" one's profile, perhaps creating new issues with stability and performance

A safer approach would be to conduct a bit of basic troubleshooting

Mozilla Safe Mode
Firefox - Standard Diagnostic
Firefox - Fix slowness, crashing and other problems

With the increasing complexity of all software these days -- including browsers and their plug-ins and extensions and other add-ons -- a bit of care and feeding is a good investment of time.
From time to time, a profile cleanup or even a new, fresh profile will restore that fast, fresh feeling.

If you really want to rollback to an older version and prevent future upgrades, then you'd go to "Options" > "Advanced" > "Update" and disable the auto-updates (not recommended) -- see screenshot. But doing so is "at your own risk".

Just my humble opinion as a long-time home user, not a geek.


Cheers,

 

[RolandJS]

MoxieMomma's correct, so I add: make sure your security programs are top-notch, smart-set, updated often. oldapps.com and oldversion.com are the only two places I normally go to get a copy of an older FF.
Guess what - I'm at FF 37

Addendum: MoxieMomma's later post reminded me that although many programs and utilities are on oldapps & oldversion sites, the best FF collection is where she said it was: mozilla.org

 

[MoxieMomma]

oldapps.com and oldversion.com are the only two places I normally go to get a copy of an older FF.

For the record, there is an official web site hosted and maintained by Mozilla.org for older versions.
So there's no need to go to third-party sites.
(I am leery of such third-party software sources. But that is my personal opinion.)

The link embedded in my previous reply will take the user to a link for that official Mozilla website to obtain the older versions.

Cheers,

 

[smiths22]

Have others here noticed something similar?

Mate i'm checking my firefox process just in case right now and it says: 455 812 KB WTF?

Avast Internet Security 2015 is next with 10 500 KB

 

[Callender]

That does seem high. Here's my Cyberfox 38.0.1 (64bit) memory usage - one tab. (I don't use FF)

Each new tab adds a little more memory usage.
00

 

[smiths22]

Right now i restarted the broswer and after 10 minutes i'm on 270 000 KB. IMO still high but i don't know for sure.

update: after a few more minutes i'm on 333 000 KB and going up...

 

[Not Myself]

From the mozillaZine Knowledge Base: "Normal Firefox memory usage reported by Windows might be as high as 100-150 MB. These numbers will vary because Firefox is configured by default to use more memory on systems that have more memory available and less on systems with less. If you experience substantially more usage than this, there may be a problem, or you may just be viewing pages with large amounts of data."

Reducing memory usage - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

 

[Layback Bear]

I think you are getting all bothered about nothing. You have 8 gb of ram; using it doesn't hurt anything.

Post this picture with Firefox in use. Use this tutorial by Brink to post screen shot.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[messypotamia]

-- Having same exact problem --

I'm on FF 38.0.1 and having the same exact experience as the OP. Win7Pro x64. I always run taskmgr (only taskmgr is elevated so I see all processes) and FF is a cpu and memory hog, especially when I'm running google maps, but in everything, i.e. facebook, normal google searches, reading email, switching between tabs, etc.
WTF????

 

[messypotamia]

I'm on FF 38.0.1 and having the same exact experience as the OP. Win7Pro x64. I always run taskmgr (only taskmgr is elevated so I see all processes) and FF is a cpu hog, especially when I'm running google maps, but in everything, i.e. facebook, normal google searches, reading email, switching between tabs, etc.
WTF????

 

[MoxieMomma]

Hi:

Computer memory is there to be used.

As previously mentioned,

From the mozillaZine Knowledge Base: "Normal Firefox memory usage reported by Windows might be as high as 100-150 MB. These numbers will vary because Firefox is configured by default to use more memory on systems that have more memory available and less on systems with less. If you experience substantially more usage than this, there may be a problem, or you may just be viewing pages with large amounts of data."

Reducing memory usage - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Also, see here: Firefox uses too much memory (RAM) - How to fix

There are additional diagnostics and troubleshooting steps here:
Standard Diagnostic - Firefox
Mozilla Safe Mode
Refresh Firefox

Hope this helps,

 

[Callender]

FF Memory Usage

Also check out your addons memory usage and disable or check for updates for any that report [Edit: "unusually" ] high memory usage. Some addons can be enabled / disabled on a when needed basis.

I actually had to remove a discontinued addon yesterday as it was preventing another addon from working properly.

Try this extension: About Addons Memory

No need to leave it enabled - just enable it as and when needed.

Usage: Once installed open a new tab and type about:addons-memory in the address bar.

​

Might be worth checking for remnant of old addons that didn't uninstall cleanly.

Try this extension: Ecleaner



Note: Only remove remnants of addons that you know you've already uninstalled.

 

[Layback Bear]

Did we loose 450125 the one who started this thread??

 

[wkernow]

same issue, moz knows, memory use

First, the comment about memory is there to be used. Yes, that is true, but when enough memory is being used that it lags and freezes the temporarily, that is a bad use of memory. There's no reason to have to wait 40+ seconds for click or tab change to take effect.

Second, Mozilla is aware of the issue (and it's considered pretty bad)... the issue seems to have first started to show up in v.37, but more pronounced in v.38 (it apparently was the result of a bugfix, and now the bugfix needs a bugfix).

Anecdotally, I'm having the same issue. Before I checked with Moz, I had done tests where I have reduced everything down to a single tab with a simple "<html><body>Test</body></html>" page open, and Firefox was still hovering around 6GB.

 

[JimHarmon]

Never check for updates but it does

I have had "Never check for updates (not recommended: security risk)" for the last several versions (I understand the risks/caveats) however Firefox has updated every time. What can I do about this? Perhaps I should search for a 'how to prevent firefox updates' thread as this one is mostly about memory...? Let me know and I'll remove this one..

Hi:

I respectfully disagree with that approach.
Rolling back to an older, outdated program version is probably not a good idea, at least for most users.

There are 2 major problems with that approach:

• First and foremost: Security
• Doing so is likely to further "break" one's profile, perhaps creating new issues with stability and performance

A safer approach would be to conduct a bit of basic troubleshooting

Mozilla Safe Mode
Firefox - Standard Diagnostic
Firefox - Fix slowness, crashing and other problems

With the increasing complexity of all software these days -- including browsers and their plug-ins and extensions and other add-ons -- a bit of care and feeding is a good investment of time.
From time to time, a profile cleanup or even a new, fresh profile will restore that fast, fresh feeling.

If you really want to rollback to an older version and prevent future upgrades, then you'd go to "Options" > "Advanced" > "Update" and disable the auto-updates (not recommended) -- see screenshot. But doing so is "at your own risk".

Just my humble opinion as a long-time home user, not a geek.


Cheers,

 

[indnajns]

Only 150MB?

Cruising speed is ONLY 150MB? LOL I thought it's base usage was at least 250MB-300MB. I've NEVER seen it use less! And the further it creeps above 500MB, the slower it gets. Past 1GB, I usually wind up having to reboot Firefox. Too much past 1GB, I wind up rebooting the whole machine. Ugh. I've always blamed Flash, as it and Firefox don't seem to play well together, but today, after doing some googling because I'm just sick and tired of it, I found it may have something to do with mysql, which *I* am NOT running, but I believe Firefox uses to keep track of things. Upon some site's recommendation, I went to go clean out temp files and logs and in the application logs were errors about mysql. Can't remember now what they said. (of course. they didn't immediately make sense.) For the record, I'm running v40.0.2, but the memory leak has been an issue for as far back as I can remember with Firefox. Way before v38.xx. You'd think they'd have figured it out by now.