firefox hangs and uses huge amounts of memory
Before upgrading to version 24.0 and 25.0 firefox was totally great, no problems. With the update to 24.0 and especially 25.0, firefox is crashing every 45 minutes, it is using 1 gig of memory for having 10 tabs open, it is hanging all the time.
I have already gone through your guides on how to fix this, going to about:memory and minimizing memory usage and clearing globally, which did nothing to the memory usage. I have also made all but 3 of my plugins ask to activate instead of always on, and disabled all of my plugins that I did not absolutely need. Again, no help for performance or optimization, or memory usage issues.
I in fact have firefox 23.0 installed but packaged as another browser, that I have installed all of the same plugins and addons on to, and it is keeping memory usage under 450mb with even 25 tabs open, and never hangs, and never crashes.
All Replies (6)
Hello,
Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration. Since this feature was added to Firefox, it has gradually improved, but there still are a few glitches.
You might need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).
Then perform these steps:
- Click the orange Firefox button at the top left, then select the "Options" button, or, if there is no Firefox button at the top, go to Tools > Options.
- In the Firefox options window click the Advanced tab, then select "General".
- In the settings list, you should find the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox. Uncheck this checkbox.
- Now, restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.
Additionally, please check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in the following Knowledge base articles:
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Thank you.
I already had hardware accel checked, and have the latest Nvidia drivers. I'm telling you, the difference in performance is just heaven and hell with 23.0 and 25.0 respectively.
oh, sorry disable hardware accel. I will try that. I'm a little drunk. ;)
Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).
- Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window.
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
See "Creating a profile":
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues
If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem.
disabling hardware accel certainly has helped, though I still don't think it is as optimized as 23.0 was. When is a patch coming out for 25.0 to address this?
Never mind, disabling video accel didn't help. If I start FF in safe mode, will it remember the 20 tabs I have open? I can't lose those tabs.