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Why does my Firefox (Win 64-bit version) run 3 firefox.exe files when I start it?

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  • Last reply by amznrandy

sjbegin
sjbegin
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My Firefox became corrupt and I performed a clean install. Now when I open Task Manager after starting Firefox there are 3 firefox.exe files running. Two use a lot of memory and one not so much. is this supposed to be happening and could it be why I constantly have slowness issues with Firefox?

My cmputer runs Win7 Pro, 64-bit and I installed the latest 64-bit Win version of Firefox.

Stephen

My Firefox became corrupt and I performed a clean install. Now when I open Task Manager after starting Firefox there are 3 firefox.exe files running. Two use a lot of memory and one not so much. is this supposed to be happening and could it be why I constantly have slowness issues with Firefox? My cmputer runs Win7 Pro, 64-bit and I installed the latest 64-bit Win version of Firefox. Stephen

Chosen solution

That is quite normal.

Current Firefox releases have three or more Firefox processes running.

  • one process for the main thread (user interface)
  • one or more processes for content threads as set via "Options/Preferences -> General -> Performance"
  • one process for the compositor thread (Windows)

See also:

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cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

That is quite normal.

Current Firefox releases have three or more Firefox processes running.

  • one process for the main thread (user interface)
  • one or more processes for content threads as set via "Options/Preferences -> General -> Performance"
  • one process for the compositor thread (Windows)

See also:

Modified by cor-el

amznrandy
amznrandy
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As of today 10-21-17 I am running Firefox 56.0 (64 bit) which was supposed to be faster and use less resources I thought. Right now I have 3 tabs open and Firefox.exe is showing open 6 times in task manager. It is using a total of over 1.4 gig of memory which I think is a little excessive. I only have 4 gig as I really don't do much except read news, email, and look at eBay. I have crashed twice when I've gotten up to 5 or 6 tabs open and tried to see something on you tube so I try not to go there any more. I didn't have this problem with the older versions of Firefox so wondering how the upgrades fixed anything. I've been a user since Netscape and haven't had any problems until now. Think something is wrong, just saying....

Modified by amznrandy