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Suddenly, this morning, Firefox seems unable to keep more than one web page active at a time; I am running 61.0.2

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For the last six months or so I have experienced what I guess is a memory leak. Whenever I have more than two or three websites open at a time (which is rare), firefox gobbles up memory (I have 6 gig of memory and am still running windows 7). I have about 6 or 7 instances of firefox active, and if I do not cut back on active websites, memory will balloon to 90+% and I usually have to restart the computer. But that is not my problem (I keep Task manager running on a separate screen, so I can monitor memory usage). Today, I have a problem when trying to start a second website. I sometimes succeed in getting a second site active, but never a third site. A possible clue: at the bottom of the screen it shows s.yimg.com or plugin.mediavoice.com

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Steve Robinson

For the last six months or so I have experienced what I guess is a memory leak. Whenever I have more than two or three websites open at a time (which is rare), firefox gobbles up memory (I have 6 gig of memory and am still running windows 7). I have about 6 or 7 instances of firefox active, and if I do not cut back on active websites, memory will balloon to 90+% and I usually have to restart the computer. But that is not my problem (I keep Task manager running on a separate screen, so I can monitor memory usage). Today, I have a problem when trying to start a second website. I sometimes succeed in getting a second site active, but never a third site. A possible clue: at the bottom of the screen it shows s.yimg.com or plugin.mediavoice.com Thanks for any help you can offer. Steve Robinson

Chosen solution

I "played around" with several of the suggestions. Eventually, I seem to have found a solution, although I can create the problem again (more below).

What I did was go into options:performance. I unchecked the box for letting Firefox pick settings. Then, you see two new options. I chose to uncheck hardware acceleration and, I set the Process Limit to 3 (default is 4).

This seems to work fine. However, if I try bringing up more than three websites that create the horizontal blue dot (see below), basically everything shuts down (by which I mean I can no longer bring up a newpage even if I first delete 1,2, or 3 of the websites with horizontal blue dots.

What do I call the HBD (horizontal blue dot)? Starting a few months ago (not sure when) I began to see HBDs. They appear at the top of the screen inside tabs. They are to the left of the page name. For example: if I click on a link to Huffington Post, which has a lot of graphics, what is see is the new tab shows a blue dot to the left of Huffington Post Breaking news.. The blue dot goes back and forth, always to the left of Huff... This seems to only happen with a page that has a lot of graphics, or a page that is subject to constant updating. For example, the Weather.com page or, a page with stock prices. Can someone explain the HBD? It never used to appear.

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Hi, please TEST in : SAFE MODE to discover what is leaving those sites at screen bottom.

In Firefox Safe mode these changes are effective:

  • all extensions are disabled (about:addons)
  • default theme is used (no persona)
  • userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored (chrome folder)
  • default toolbar layout is used (file: localstore-safe.rdf)
  • Javascript JIT compilers are disabled (prefs: javascript.options.*jit)
  • hardware acceleration is disabled (Options > Performance > Uncheck to view)
  • plugins are not affected
  • preferences are not affected

TEST''''is issue still there ? Did you go through the list of Extensions 1 by 1 ?

Since have only 6gig of ram :

To be Checked and turned off unless needed for accessibility : Please : go to the Firefox 3 Bar Menu --> Options --> Privacy & Security panel and under Permissions check (put a tick in the box) the setting to Prevent Accessibility Services from accessing your browser.

Multi-Processor Support : Go to the 3 Bar Menu then Options --> General --> Performance and untick everything. change the recommended size lower then see how it runs. Note: 1 = No Multiprocessor = slow again. Try 2 Restart Firefox after making these changes please. Note : Hardware Acceleration is for Video Card, Monitor to see if remain off or to turn back on.

Only Disable as last resort.

Multi-processor Can completely disable it this way in about:config : dom.ipc.processCount set to 1 browser.tabs.remote.autostart = false browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 = false

Only move to esr if low ram and old system.

Firefox Extended Release Version : Firefox ESR does not come with the latest features but it has the latest security and stability fixes.

If do please :

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Seçilmiş Həll

I "played around" with several of the suggestions. Eventually, I seem to have found a solution, although I can create the problem again (more below).

What I did was go into options:performance. I unchecked the box for letting Firefox pick settings. Then, you see two new options. I chose to uncheck hardware acceleration and, I set the Process Limit to 3 (default is 4).

This seems to work fine. However, if I try bringing up more than three websites that create the horizontal blue dot (see below), basically everything shuts down (by which I mean I can no longer bring up a newpage even if I first delete 1,2, or 3 of the websites with horizontal blue dots.

What do I call the HBD (horizontal blue dot)? Starting a few months ago (not sure when) I began to see HBDs. They appear at the top of the screen inside tabs. They are to the left of the page name. For example: if I click on a link to Huffington Post, which has a lot of graphics, what is see is the new tab shows a blue dot to the left of Huffington Post Breaking news.. The blue dot goes back and forth, always to the left of Huff... This seems to only happen with a page that has a lot of graphics, or a page that is subject to constant updating. For example, the Weather.com page or, a page with stock prices. Can someone explain the HBD? It never used to appear.

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A correction to my previous post. Three or more tabs with HBDs mean I cannot bring up another website (I said more than three above)

Also, I had Huffington up and went to Mozilla Support to enter the two sentences above. No problem. I entered the two sentences then hit Post Reply. Oops. Nothing happened. Assuming this works, it is because I rebooted Firefox, then re-entered and hit Post Reply again.

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Thanks Pkshadow for your suggestions. Would not have hit upon my almost solution without your suggestions.