Plugin container consumes massive system resources
When I play flash games on facebook, I notice after a few minutes that my computer seems to get slow and continues to be. When I looked at the Task Manager, plugin-container.exe is using up to 1.2gb of my memory. For example, the moment I no longer have Castleville running, it drops to about 40mb, which is alot more acceptable.
Before in version 10 of Firefox I could disable the plugin-container but now the option seems to disappear in version 11. Please help, I wish to disable it so my computer can run normally. It's crazy that I can't just have only one tab open, to play Castleville for 5 minutes before it gets a little bogged down.
I've tried the suggestions for [[High memory usage|https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/High%20memory%20usage]] , but it hasn't helped or already done that before reading. My Flash is up to date (11.2.202.233), Firefox is 11.0.
Any help would be appreciated to disable/ limit the plugin-container.
Chosen solution
melbmonkey wrote:
Any help would be appreciated to disable/ limit the plugin-container.
- Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
- Press the big button to bypass the warning.
- In the Filter bar, paste dom.ipc.plugins.enabled
- In the lower pane, double-click dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to set its value to false.
Caveat
This will disable all out-of-process plug-ins. The trouble is that in order to disable Flash Player specifically, you must create a boolean preference named dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.<filename> and set it to false. But the filename depends on the version, and Flash Player is frequently updated (for example, it's now called NPSWF32_11_2_202_233.dll). So unless you plan on creating a new preference and resetting the old one each time you update Flash Player, disabling all out-of-process plug-ins is the way to go.
For more information, see
If the preference resets itself after you restart Firefox, see
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I am not aware that disabling plugin container will massively improve Firefox speed. Disabling plugin container could result in Firefox crashing instead of the game crashing.
Game users may well have websites or forums giving tips.
You have obviously read high memory usage
It's quite rare when a plugin does crash, can't remember when it happened last time but I do know when flash does because of the icon it gives. But it just seems crazy for it to use up to 1.2gb to prevent a perhaps 10mb game in the slim chance it may crash. Much rather have the extra memory and no protection then the current situation.
It may be interesting to see where the memory is going and being used.
Try running firefox with only the one game tab open and nothing else other than the about:memory tab. Try this both with the plugin container enabled and with the pluging container disabled.
How do the about memory reports compare. (Just key into the location bar about:memory and hit the return key. Note you get options on buttons to reduce memory use, you also get information on mousover of the items in the about:memory page.
It may just be a case of the game using a massive amount of memory !
Flash has a very bad garbage collector. In my experience, it only starts to do any significant work at about 1 gig of used memory. The only solution is to not use flash, so you're pretty much stuck. I have an old netbook, so I feel your pain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collector_%28computing%29
I had a similar problem to I used this guide to start playing Flash games offline.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-play-flash-games-offline/
John99: I've had a look and it takes about 200Mb. There are some big sized components in the 'Other Measurements' of about:memory which I don't know. 319.51 MB -- vsize 191.18 MB -- private 175.11 MB -- resident 104.61 MB -- heap-committed
96.09 MB -- heap-allocated
jimloxley: Well the games in question I can't play offline unfortunately.
Funny thing is, it crash a day ago and got the exclamation mark on my flash game, but couldn't close any tabs, swap tabs or do anything. So went into Task Manager and ended plugin-container.exe, and then instantly I had functionality in Firefox again.
Chosen Solution
melbmonkey wrote:
Any help would be appreciated to disable/ limit the plugin-container.
- Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
- Press the big button to bypass the warning.
- In the Filter bar, paste dom.ipc.plugins.enabled
- In the lower pane, double-click dom.ipc.plugins.enabled to set its value to false.
Caveat
This will disable all out-of-process plug-ins. The trouble is that in order to disable Flash Player specifically, you must create a boolean preference named dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.<filename> and set it to false. But the filename depends on the version, and Flash Player is frequently updated (for example, it's now called NPSWF32_11_2_202_233.dll). So unless you plan on creating a new preference and resetting the old one each time you update Flash Player, disabling all out-of-process plug-ins is the way to go.
For more information, see
If the preference resets itself after you restart Firefox, see
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