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Solution for Firefox browser memory leaks?

T

turok

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 1, 2011
Messages
12,365
The longer that I continuously browse online using Firefox on Windows XP, the higher the physical RAM+virtual memory consumption climbs. I also use Google Chrome Canary and Chromium Dev, along with Opera/Opera Tor browsers on occasion, but I have been using Firefox for years, ever since it was originally called Firebird, and know it and the plugins/most extensions inside out, so it still remains my browser of choice over the others.

High memory usage


I can't afford to buy a new or newer PC or laptop that runs Windows 7 yet, and I much rather prefer using Linux OSes. But the encrypted wireless signal that I snatched out of the air with my WiFi dongle in monitor/promiscuous mode, captured enough packets and soon cracked its WEP encryption, is apparently exclusive to Windows, and I have not been able to figure out how to connect to the signal while using any of my installed Linux OSes yet. I also cannot afford to pay for my "own" internet connection, as our condo complex is served only by Comcast, and my dumbass wife who "was" still employed then and also was "responsible" for paying only for our cable, failed to pay our bundled bill for several months after we moved in here, so they soon shut us the fuck off, dammit!!

In order to get it back, we would have to pay ~$500 in past due charges, plus install fees, and prepay the cost of the first month's service and since my wife is and has long been unemployed, and we both live upon my fixed disability income, so I can't afford to subscribe to a broadband service and "legally" connect to the internet again as yet.


I never had memory leak issues when browsing online with Firefox on Linux, but while browsing recently, I discovered this developer's extension that may solve or at least reduce memory leaks/virtual memory consumption. The newest, or "beta" version 7.5.3 of the extension is recommended, but only works with Firefox versions of 6.0 or higher. As of the date of this OP, the most currently "stable" and supported version of Firefox is 9.0.1, the "beta" version is @ 10.0b3, the "alpha" or unstable version is @ 11.0a1. There is of course, for those who must have the latest, being the nightly bleeding-edge developer versions that can be downloaded each and every day and used, but are often buggy and crash frequently.

I also often use a "legacy" version of Firefox, being 3.6.25, which is still being supported, b/c many of my favorite Firefox add-ons, plug-ins, tweaks, and installed extensions are NOT as yet compatible with the currently stable version. This much older version is still supported, the reason mainly being that although many businesses are finally permitting their employees to use Firefox instead of ONLY Internet Explorer, due to security/IT/sysadmins needing to test out any new versions of the Firefox browser for their compatibility/security with the types of unique and/or customized programs, security software,and firewalls that they may have implemented to prevent or reduce any chances that their servers, as well as company secrets, plans, communications, and financial info might be hacked/cracked into and intranet becomes rooted, corrupted, and compromised.

http://www.browsermemory.com/
 
This has been an issue since day 1. I am still FF loyal though. I think when they created the plug-in container it did the opposite of what they intended in terms of fixing high mem use. I would not use that old FF. Its too old and insecure

I used that extension a long time ago and it did not do much. I wouldnt waster your time. There are some hacks to your config that can be done to help like adjusting cache etc.

How much RAM is in your machine? Have you tried re-sizing your swap file? I think most browsers have not figured out flash and other apps that hog memory and don't release it well.

Also do you clean and tune your machine regularly?

as for internet, buy a monthly pre-paid or other wireless stick. Any cell phone co should sell them. There are ways to solve this problem without trying to snag weak signals and being busted for sniffing their packets.
 
erg57 said:
This has been an issue since day 1. I am still FF loyal though. I think when they created the plug-in container it did the opposite of what they intended in terms of fixing high mem use. I would not use that old FF. Its too old and insecure

I used that extension a long time ago and it did not do much. I wouldnt waster your time. There are some hacks to your config that can be done to help like adjusting cache etc.

How much RAM is in your machine? Have you tried re-sizing your swap file? I think most browsers have not figured out flash and other apps that hog memory and don't release it well.

Also do you clean and tune your machine regularly?

as for internet, buy a monthly pre-paid or other wireless stick. Any cell phone co should sell them. There are ways to solve this problem without trying to snag weak signals and being busted for sniffing their packets.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have already done most of your suggestions, including moving the page-file onto another HDD and into its own separate first primary partition, with a static size roughly double that of the 1 GB total of installed physical RAM. Although the PC with a 1.8 GB P4 that I still use is now almost a decade old, I am going to browse online soon to see if I can add another 1 GB stick of memory, although it is best to have the same mfg, type, and size of"registered" DDR SDRAM installed.

But when I originally bought this manufacturer-brand desktop PC, I knew very, very little about PCs, and operating systems like Windows, and if I had it to do over again, I would have simply bought a laptop OR bought everything separately, such as a case, motherboard, CPU, power supply, memory sticks, and GPU, Win XP Home/Pro OS disk, instead of getting the mfg's (Sony Vaio) freaking 5 CD set "recovery" disks ect..separately, and built it myself instead. But I was in kind of a hurry, b/c my wife had lost her job a few months earlier, she wasn't having much luck finding another one, there were no unemployment extensions being granted in early 2002...and we needed to buy a computer quickly to help her look for work online.

I had to take a"crash" course to learn how to use WinXP by making lots of mistakes, some bad enough that caused me to have to reinstall the OS using the recovery disks a few times. But I bought a few Windows XP OS books at the bookstore,and read them often @ work when on my lunchtime and breaks, so I was able to solve all of my problems using the books or online, and avoid spending any money on calling tech support or something like the geek squad.

As far as the internet, I am going to look into maybe getting DSL instead, as long as I don't need to have an activated landline telephone subscription included as well.
 
you have enough RAM already but another gig could help. XP does not read anymore than 2 GB. You have to buy RAM sticks in pairs for your mobo. You prolly have two 512 MB sticks now. Youll need to buy two 1024 sticks

as for firefox, i can recommend a link to show you how to adjust config for best memory use. In the end, though, you just have to restart FF to get the cache cleaned -- no matter how juiced up your machine is. I have a win7 with 6 GB of RAM and a 2.2ghz CPU and FF stillgets slow. I also have a desktop with XP that I use as a server type--I love XP despite its age. I still think FF is the best browser out there

Set up FF to restore your previous tabs on restart.
 
Found another "free" program online called "Process Lasso" that so far has worked beautifully in preventing my Firefox browser from freezing up, hanging, or crashing, this despite the fact that right now the browser is using ~225 MB of virtual memory, according to the Windows task manager

The best part is that it can optionally be installed onto a portable thumb-drive and has a "small" memory footprint itself, although I am expecting to soon see "nag" screens trying to convince me to upgrade to their paid version.

http://www.bitsum.com/

I am also now using another portable program called "Process Hacker" (which is probably just the same as Process Lasso, but it is not automated) .I have to manually tweak ongoing active processes, and decide which programs/processes should/could have priority over others, and which ones can be safely disabled on a temporary basis (I am leaving the "core" Windows processes alone of course) :)

http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/
 
looks likje you may have found something....

do you have your startup items set for optimal memory via MSCONFIG. if not do it. it wil help immensely
 
erg57 said:
looks likje you may have found something....

do you have your startup items set for optimal memory via MSCONFIG. if not do it. it wil help immensely
Click to expand...


Yeah,I'll check that out too, and I am also going to have to get around to upgrading this XP Home setup to "Pro" with the upgrade disk that I have, so that I can use its Group Policy editor and Microsoft's tools with its management console snap-ins.

I have another PC that my now late neigbor gave to me, it is only a few years old, and has PCI instead of a legacy AGP slot for a newer videocard. It also uses SATA instead of just PATA and USB 3.0 instead of 1.1 or the later 2.0 PCI card that I now have installed on my old one.

Trouble is, that the other XP Pro OS disk I have, only has Service Pack 1 included, and when I tried to install, it simply refused to recognize the newer hardware. I need to create a personalized bootable XP Pro disk or bootable thumbdrive with XP Pro and Service Packs 1, 2, and 3 included, but haven't done so as yet.
 
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