It's possible that after many crashes, something didn't get cleaned up properly. If you are aware of a way to reliably reproduce it, it could be filed as a bug. However, you might prefer to stay away from that page.

Dude, it's our LOCAL PAPER.

That may not have been the actual problem though.

Until I get some power supplies installed in my more 'modern' machines and get them back up (2006-08 ish but at least 64 bit) then I will have two Linux Mint and two Win 7 machines again.

Best I can do right now.

And my experience with 32 bit FF has been that it's like a drunk driver. I cut the e10s down to 2 or 3 to get it to behave better in the first place. How it works well in Mint 19 is beyond me except that it's modified for Linux. I'm in my 50s and have been at this since TRS-80 in the 70s mind you.

Keep at it. i'll find something to answer it with and without your help but I asked because i needed help of course.

PS This problem has existed before version 62 for this computer and it wasn't exactly confidence boosting that FF went from 66.0 to 66.3 in about two weeks time and part of the reason had to do with a critical memory bug. This is the first time I've seen this happen, or was able to notice it. If you are insinuating I should try to REPRODUCE it, that's kinda not my bag with the only running computer of four that I have right now. It's not a good time for experimentation. Just lost a relative and a beloved pet this month as well and maybe I'm trying to avoid following that too.

I will say that it has gotten better over time but I'm not going to figure this out without mor help than I could find online so far. The best I can figure out is that Firefox Quantum eats memory like Dracula and can't be so easily adjusted and them it tells me some of my options are disabled by the origanization, leading me to believe I don't have the right version installed even (Enterprise)? I'm not a business, and I see that others might have this problem as well but you do see that after 34 years using Windows i'm not too fond of editing a registry anymore. I have tried to stay away from anything resembling Chrome/Chromium as well but everybody is rushing into that arena. So fine, maybe if the new Edge turns out to be any good vs. the old, iffy IE 11 I once used more often and they say will soon port to other Windows versions, maybe I'll look at it, but NOT Chrome itself.

And when I look at the question in my profile does 2 people have this problem mean 2 distinct individuals or that I've replied more than once? If I could link to the other question I might gain some insight I couldn't trying to find it with the search feature.

It would really help to know that.

Thank you, looking forward to your answers.

I see something that looks similar but the bug report is *17 years old*

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131456

One more thing...I clear my FF cache completely regularly. Since I don't use IE 11 much anymore it occasionally pays having it down the line, although I clear it once I've imported.

Okay, i now see that it takes some time for the instance of firefox.exe to go away after you shut all the windows down.

So what does this mean?

Is there a chance this can be exploited?

Asynchronousman said

Okay, i now see that it takes some time for the instance of firefox.exe to go away after you shut all the windows down.

Yes, it takes time for Firefox to fully exit when it shuts down normally. It is updating settings files and databases in the Profile folder. Occasionally the shutdown process may hang and Firefox may show a crash dialog about 60 seconds after you exit.

Asynchronousman said

So what does this mean? Is there a chance this can be exploited?

Hmm, as long as Firefox has disconnected from the network, it's hard to imagine how a slow shutdown could be exploited. Malware can just modify Firefox data files directly if it wants.

The point is that once the program is shut down NO instances should linger, even momentarily. Take the example, if you would of a page lock exploit in IE.

Usually that page has a duplicate file that acts like those old TV shows about disarming a bomb by picking an unknown wire to clip. If you close the wrong one (sometimes there is no choice, they are both triggers) the other closes down all instances of IE immediately. Some of them are not fully formed and you can defeat them but the point I'm making here is this...you can shut individual iexplore.exe instances down separately in task manager but you can also kill them at once from the X in the program bar at the top, which you can also do in FF.

HOWEVER...except in the case of those lock exploits IE rarely freezes your computer and you can close IE pages with task manager and reduce memory in use.

This is a fundamental and historically fatal flaw in Firefox. Now I used to use Netscape Communicator and Navigator, until version 6.0 when I decided to switch to IE 5.5 which was the best I could get for my Windows version then. I resumed using FF when I was given a hard drive with Linux Mint Maya (14) and I installed it with Windows because of concerns about IE and because I wasn't about to install 10 (tried it, left it and I have stuff from over 15 years ago I still need to use that 7 still works with, nothing going on the web from them) and I am fine with software I got in 2003 and has no web updating available as well. Buy a Chevy, drive a Chevy.

But it seems the only way to truly get FF to work is via the modified *and older, 66.0.2* version found in Mint.

I don't get freezing much if at all using the Linux version, and it has less memory than this machine. Okay...

I can't keep refreshing it, it's true and that may reset the e10 setting back to the default of 8 which chokes this machine, I throttle that down to 2 or 3 and it works better but still hangs me.

WHY oh WHY can't Firefox release memory for closed pages and especially if you've deleted the page or told it to dismiss/forget?

Don't mention hardware acceleration, that makes no difference of any note. Hostage RAM is the problem.

PS Outlook.com deems your responses to be junk every time and I keep sending them to the inbox, that's it's problem but why I don't find your responses as fast.

Regarding how shutdown works, it's not a support question at this point. I suppose you could suggest that Firefox display a "Shutting down" panel on the screen while it is exiting so the timing matches up more closely, but I suspect there is not enough demand for that to add extra cycles to the shutdown process to show and remove the panel.

Regarding memory use, if your Firefox doesn't release memory the way you expect, maybe something here will help: Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix.

Asynchronousman said

The hard drive often gets to clattering badly before FF crashes.

(Note: If you have the FF Malware Bytes Extension, disable that. At least with me, a LOT of HDD crunching activity.) List all of your Extensions, active or inactive. Some 'inactive' or uninstalled Extensions can remain behind, still RUNNING! I noticed this with a Download Manager Extension. It was hanging-up my Web navigation, installed and 'uninstalled!)

What I see in Task Manager, Physical Memory Usage over time creeps up the graph, eventually nearing my 8GB my computer has. So, depending how many Tabs/Sites I visit, when the Graph Line nears the top, I hear my disk drive go into 'crunch' mode. This must be FF Caching Data and/or The 'large' Paging File crunching my hard drive. This can happen within several hours or a few days later, depending on my FF use.

However, once it reaches this point, the browser performance takes a nasty hit. The only way to regain better performance for me, is to Exit (Quit) FF and restart it.

Recommended Hardware for FF 66:

• Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
• 512MB of RAM / 2GB of RAM for the 64-bit version
• 200MB of hard drive space
  

Please do the following:

Click on the Windows icon 'Start' (bottom-left) and in the right column, bottom, click on Run. Enter in:

...Wait until the green bar loads and disappears, then click "Save All Information".
Post back here in the Forum with a Copy-n-Paste of just these information parts, under these three Headers:

Make sure your computer is not too 'LOW' on disk-remaining space. This will be a major performance problem if your remaining disk space is TOO LOW!
If you're way under 25%, then you're probably running into performance / Memory issues.
Windows-7 and Programs like to have plenty of free-disk 'breathing' room.
If you have lots of Browser Windows and Tabs going and your FireFox Browser is set to Restore Session when you start-up FF, the following will help with conserving some Memory:

Go to Options. Edit or Insert in the Address/URL Box About:Config and go there. Set the following Values:

browser.newtabpage.enabled; false

browser.newtabpage.enhanced; false

browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand; true

Additionally, you could try this also. Have FF reset how much Disk Cache it will use for your system by changing the following to true:

browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run - false

It will change back to false after FF is Exited and runs next time, setting-up your Disk Cache value. Maybe this doesn't need to run again, but I did it a while back and 'appeared' to help me.

Note: 4/23/2019... I'm experimenting with a reduced Disk Cache Value in the About:Config area:

browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled = false browser.cache.disk.capacity = 175000

Finally, I did the following FireFox adjustments for my old 2010 computer with the Performance settings in Options as shown in the image attachment:


~Pj

No extension, MBAM.exe is installed in Windows and is the FREE version 3.7.1 and only used to scan nightly after AVG Free 19.?.3409? which is active in real time.

I did not know you can turn off the multiple e10 processes by setting to 1. There's news hot off the press.

I have two hard drives but D: is more or less used for storing archived stuff but not really being used right now...C: is ~80 Gb (74.5, 16.6 GB free, D: ~1 TB (931GB, 876 GB free)...D: is more or less just in there because, it gets moved from computer to computer as a storage drive and is internal.

I don't care to restore any sessions, that is wholly annoying if I got one of those phony Windows alert lock screens and I still have my History even if I did start a new session to rebuild from.

I also have little problem with over 40-50 pages/tabs/whatever open at a time, that isn't the big deal, it's like one site does me in and that doesn't even seem that bad, it has either been Yahoo or the puny little local newspaper site that hardly adds new content beyond a few new stories and the obituaries. And the obits are the first thing i go to at my age...

So I will start off slowly with the e10s and a couple things as I go.

I'll come back later with some followup.

PS You're probably more help than the last guy, at least you have actual things to try.

PPS One more thing. Why are my options restricted as if I were on a business network instead of a personal/single user? This cropped up only recently and the other three machines normally on the DSL gateway are down and not connected since before that.

jscher2000 said

Regarding how shutdown works, it's not a support question at this point. I suppose you could suggest that Firefox display a "Shutting down" panel on the screen while it is exiting so the timing matches up more closely, but I suspect there is not enough demand for that to add extra cycles to the shutdown process to show and remove the panel. Regarding memory use, if your Firefox doesn't release memory the way you expect, maybe something here will help: Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix.

I think the person after you has a vibe on it. You probably missed it. Thanks and good day, I'll continue with them.

Pj said

Asynchronousman said

The hard drive often gets to clattering badly before FF crashes.

(Note: If you have the FF Malware Bytes Extension, disable that. At least with me, a LOT of HDD crunching activity.) List all of your Extensions, active or inactive. Some 'inactive' or uninstalled Extensions can remain behind, still RUNNING! I noticed this with a Download Manager Extension. It was hanging-up my Web navigation, installed and 'uninstalled!)

---

What I see in Task Manager, Physical Memory Usage over time creeps up the graph, eventually nearing my 8GB my computer has. So, depending how many Tabs/Sites I visit, when the Graph Line nears the top, I hear my disk drive go into 'crunch' mode. This must be FF Caching Data and/or The 'large' Paging File crunching my hard drive. This can happen within several hours or a few days later, depending on my FF use.

However, once it reaches this point, the browser performance takes a nasty hit. The only way to regain better performance for me, is to Exit (Quit) FF and restart it.

Recommended Hardware for FF 66:

• Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
• 512MB of RAM / 2GB of RAM for the 64-bit version
• 200MB of hard drive space
  

Please do the following:

Click on the Windows icon 'Start' (bottom-left) and in the right column, bottom, click on Run. Enter in:

<center>DxDiag</center>

...Wait until the green bar loads and disappears, then click "Save All Information".
Post back here in the Forum with a Copy-n-Paste of just these information parts, under these three Headers:

---

System Information

---

---

Display Devices

---

---

Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives

---

Make sure your computer is not too 'LOW' on disk-remaining space. This will be a major performance problem if your remaining disk space is TOO LOW!
If you're way under 25%, then you're probably running into performance / Memory issues.
Windows-7 and Programs like to have plenty of free-disk 'breathing' room.
If you have lots of Browser Windows and Tabs going and your FireFox Browser is set to Restore Session when you start-up FF, the following will help with conserving some Memory:

Go to Options. Edit or Insert in the Address/URL Box About:Config and go there. Set the following Values:

<center>

browser.newtabpage.enabled; false

browser.newtabpage.enhanced; false

browser.sessionstore.restore_pinned_tabs_on_demand; true

</center>
Upon the next start of FireFox, this will preload only the last Tab you were parked on per browser window. The other Tabs from your Previous Session will load only when you click on them.

If you open a lot of browser windows, you can set the maximum 'remembered' browser windows higher than the default for your Restored Session. Example: My max is set for 25:

<center>browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo; 25</center>

Additionally, you could try this also. Have FF reset how much Disk Cache it will use for your system by changing the following to true:

browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run - false

It will change back to false after FF is Exited and runs next time, setting-up your Disk Cache value. Maybe this doesn't need to run again, but I did it a while back and 'appeared' to help me.

Note: 4/23/2019... I'm experimenting with a reduced Disk Cache Value in the About:Config area:

browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled = false browser.cache.disk.capacity = 175000

Finally, I did the following FireFox adjustments for my old 2010 computer with the Performance settings in Options as shown in the image attachment:


~Pj

No, I am still seeing 4 firefox.exes after setting e10 to 1, that doesn't seem to change anything. I have that paper, my webmail and this page up plus the options page.

I have no idea why I need four of them anyway and one is up to about 600,000 KB in no time flat. Nothing about that is anything new.

GAH! as it says when it crashes.

My only hope it to go put new power supplies in the other three 64 bit units and get one of my older 64 bit units going again in a new case...the old one was cheap and oddball and falling apart. I have relatively few troubles with 64 bit machines that have LESS RAM for some reason.

I'm going to blame it on 32-bit Quantum. IE and Windows have works fine on this computer.