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why does firefox make my hard drive run continuously?

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  • Last reply by FredMcD

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Every now and then my hard drive will start running continuously and programs start to slow down or freeze (any program I have open, not just Firefox). When I start the task manager and go to processes, I see that Firefox is running and consumer a huge amount of memory, compared to every other running process. Sometimes this happens even when I do not have Firefox open -- it is running in background somehow and using almost all of the computer's process capacity. Why does this happen? Is it possible my computer has been hijacked and somebody else is using my brower/Internet connection?

Every now and then my hard drive will start running continuously and programs start to slow down or freeze (any program I have open, not just Firefox). When I start the task manager and go to processes, I see that Firefox is running and consumer a huge amount of memory, compared to every other running process. Sometimes this happens even when I do not have Firefox open -- it is running in background somehow and using almost all of the computer's process capacity. Why does this happen? Is it possible my computer has been hijacked and somebody else is using my brower/Internet connection?

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?


https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+is+already+running+but+is+not+responding

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding


Start your Computer in safe mode with network support. Then start Firefox. Try Safe websites. Is the problem still there?

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Linux+Safe+Mode Starting Any Computer In Safe Mode; Free Online Encyclopedia