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Memory usage renders my computer useless for other programs

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

ferago42
ferago42
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Sometimes even when I have a few tabs open (four), Firefox eats up my memory. The attached memory showed what happened to me earlier: 3.1 GB of RAM used on only four tabs. This hogs my computer and I can't do anything else, had to close Firefox from the taskbar.

I know may people think that RAM not used is RAM wasted, but that's a simplistic way of putting things. At work, I'm constantly firing up applications, so if Firefox decides to not waste my RAM and goes nearly 100% then I can't open any new program. And other programs stop eventually. For example, if I want to open Microsoft Word's Online Art feature, I can't because memory is at 100%. Or if I want to fire a debugging process with Visual Studio, can't because memory is at 100%.

I've tried the solution on using less memory, as depicted by the article found in Mozilla Support (enabling config flags) to no avail. What can be done?

Sometimes even when I have a few tabs open (four), Firefox eats up my memory. The attached memory showed what happened to me earlier: 3.1 GB of RAM used on only four tabs. This hogs my computer and I can't do anything else, had to close Firefox from the taskbar. I know may people think that RAM not used is RAM wasted, but that's a simplistic way of putting things. At work, I'm constantly firing up applications, so if Firefox decides to not waste my RAM and goes nearly 100% then I can't open any new program. And other programs stop eventually. For example, if I want to open Microsoft Word's Online Art feature, I can't because memory is at 100%. Or if I want to fire a debugging process with Visual Studio, can't because memory is at 100%. I've tried the solution on using less memory, as depicted by the article found in Mozilla Support (enabling config flags) to no avail. What can be done?

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Does the about:memory page show what is taking up this memory?

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Appearance
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window

You can try to modify multi-process settings to see if this has effect.

  • set number of content processes to 1 if it is currently set to a higher value (4)
    Options/Preferences -> General -> Performance
    remove checkmark: [ ] "Use recommended performance settings"
  • disable multi-process windows in Firefox