Firefox 7.0.1 goes berserk & requires a forced shutdown, after shopping (Lego), hotmailing, google mapping, pandora'ing, and doing some minor google fact checks.

I suppose the solution is to wait for Firefox 8.

I am running 7.0.1 on xp and on vista 64bit. i use the same plugins on both systems. the xp version does not seem to have a memory leak after 2 days with 8 tabs open it's memory usage is up to 381,360k. on the vista machine after an hour it's up to 800k and at least once a day it gets up to 1 to 2 gig of memory usage. At 1 to 1.5 gig it gets slow to respond and i have to exit and restore last session to recovery. i have the same problem if i start using the Help/Restart with ad-ons disabled. I am even trying it in xp compatibility mode with no change. HELP

i found a solution to this problem in vista 64 bit i got the memory leak module from http://www.rizonesoft.com/2011/firemin/ i just copied the firemin.exe and it's bin directory to my firefox dir and ran firemin.exe. my memory usage dropped form 900k to a value ranging from 5,000k to 14,000 k with about 15 tabs in 4 firefox windows. this is a great improvement. You will have to have it run at start up to have it running the next time you reboot.

I used the startup manager in the iobit.com advanced system care module to set it to run every time I reboot. Both softwares are free iobit.com has a great defrag utility that is also free.

7.0.1 is the worst, crank up to 1gb within 1 hrs, used to be half day, very disappointed.

Hi,

I've cleaned up my old Sony VAIO 1500mhz processor, 512mb ram computer (any readers can laugh now), with defrag'ing, freeing up hard drive space, re-partitioning, etc., etc., etc. ... lots of effort; ordered 2gb of ram (long overdue ... not yet installed); upgraded to IE8 (already had Firefox 7); and installed Chrome.

Oh, and I also installed the Memory Fox add-on for Firefox, but disabled it shortly thereafter. Seemed like too much of an analysis time effort. No immediate signs of helping, though to be fair I didn't give it much of a chance.

Tried to do a controlled test of Netflix alone with the 3 different browsers (watching MST3K btw). (a) I suppose all three passed, but Firefox had trouble switching over to the full screen without freezing up the movie. (b) IE8 had a clear picture quality lead over Firefox in one instance of stopping and switching over browsers. (c) All 3 browsers to include all exe processes tied to streaming (multiple IE processes (2), multiple Chrome processes (3), and Firefox plugin-container processes (2 + Firefox exe itself)) showed similar & stable RAM requirements ranging from 150mb to 300mb.

All-in-all Chrome seemed zippier. My arguably unscientific conclusion, but with a notable time investment (for me at least).

Interesting that many of you with much more powerful pc's than this one in front of me have Firefox taking up much more RAM. I suppose part of that is improved video quality and more pages/tabs open, in addition the presumed leak topic of this thread.

For John/Others, sincerely appreciate all of the (apparently) volunteer help for such a huge user population, some of whom may not come off well like me. My perspective is already posted, and I suppose the only thing to add is that I don't expect most folks to even go to the shallow level of troubleshooting effort I've gone to. Pointing to the user as the fix will only go so far by individual.

Anyway, thanks again. For now I intend to become a Firefox & Chrome browser, rather than a sole Firefox browser. Time will tell if a full switchover is in the future.

Sincerely, Matthew

This has nothing to do with plugins or add ons except maybe the way that firefox interfaces with them. Chrome creates a new process for each tab, has flash and other add ons and doesn't use nearly as much ram. This is clearly going to be the downfall of Firefox. Too bad too because there really is no other browser like it.

Firefox 7 lean and fast? I have never had such a memory hog EVER! 1.3GB as I speak! Plus, plugin-contain is right behind it with 184MB!

Love the suggestion here, don't use flash and don't use the plugins and don't open tabs. So basically don't use anything that distinguishes Firefox from any other browser out there. These problems are not getting fixed they are getting worse and worse with each new version, My guess is its a Windows 7 specific thing as never had these problems on xp, or other os's. These problems are not isolated many web developers I know have given up totally on Firefox as a development browser due to these issues, and many regular users in general are switching to Chrome. Well Firefox is a great browser in terms of web standards, I think you guys need to devote a update to stability and solving these problems as right now on my system and a number of my friends systems its really not usable as even a browser let alone a web development environment. These are not isolated issues these are serious issues that need to be addressed that make Firefox unusable for a percentage of your users. I know plugging c++ memory leaks is not fun but neither is a unusable web browser right now have to rank ie 9 8 and 7 higher then firefox(which is really sad btw lol) get your act together guys and patch these leaks!

Yeah, running 7.0.1. Was told it solved the memory problems. Just leave it logged into hotmail for a while. Have to restart every morning, log into hotmail and all my other sites all over again. This is my about:memory from running Firefox over the weekend:

Main Process

Explicit Allocations

1,339.34 MB (100.0%) -- explicit

├──1,051.98 MB (78.55%) -- js

│  ├────695.60 MB (51.94%) -- compartment(https://secure)

│  │    ├──314.08 MB (23.45%) -- gc-heap

│  │    │  ├──288.08 MB (21.51%) -- objects

│  │    │  ├───22.15 MB (01.65%) -- strings

│  │    │  └────3.85 MB (00.29%) -- (5 omitted)

│  │    ├──274.83 MB (20.52%) -- string-chars

│  │    ├──105.25 MB (07.86%) -- object-slots

│  │    └────1.44 MB (00.11%) -- (5 omitted)

│  ├────228.33 MB (17.05%) -- compartment(http://secure)

│  │    ├──122.94 MB (09.18%) -- gc-heap

│  │    │  ├──110.94 MB (08.28%) -- objects

│  │    │  ├────8.60 MB (00.64%) -- strings

│  │    │  └────3.39 MB (00.25%) -- (5 omitted)

│  │    ├───59.21 MB (04.42%) -- string-chars

│  │    ├───42.07 MB (03.14%) -- object-slots

│  │    └────4.12 MB (00.31%) -- (5 omitted)

│  ├─────55.98 MB (04.18%) -- (120 omitted)

│  ├─────22.69 MB (01.69%) -- gc-heap-chunk-unused

│  ├─────22.05 MB (01.65%) -- compartment(http://bl152w.blu152.mail.live.com/?rru=...)

│  │     ├───8.16 MB (00.61%) -- gc-heap

│  │     │   └──8.16 MB (00.61%) -- (7 omitted)

│  │     ├───7.81 MB (00.58%) -- mjit-code

│  │     └───6.08 MB (00.45%) -- (6 omitted)

│  ├─────19.04 MB (01.42%) -- compartment([System Principal])

│  │     ├──12.04 MB (00.90%) -- gc-heap

│  │     │  └──12.04 MB (00.90%) -- (7 omitted)

│  │     └───7.00 MB (00.52%) -- (7 omitted)

│  └──────8.29 MB (00.62%) -- gc-heap-chunk-admin

├────249.79 MB (18.65%) -- heap-unclassified

├─────30.46 MB (02.27%) -- storage

│     └──30.46 MB (02.27%) -- sqlite

│        ├──19.21 MB (01.43%) -- places.sqlite

│        │  ├──18.84 MB (01.41%) -- cache-used

│        │  └───0.36 MB (00.03%) -- (2 omitted)

│        ├───8.16 MB (00.61%) -- urlclassifier3.sqlite

│        │   ├──8.07 MB (00.60%) -- cache-used

│        │   └──0.08 MB (00.01%) -- (2 omitted)

│        └───3.10 MB (00.23%) -- (12 omitted)

└──────7.11 MB (00.53%) -- (3 omitted)

Other Measurements

1,615.53 MB -- vsize

1,427.79 MB -- private

1,352.58 MB -- heap-committed

1,306.78 MB -- heap-used

 957.39 MB -- resident

 509.00 MB -- js-gc-heap

  60.22 MB -- heap-unused

   5.15 MB -- shmem-allocated

   5.15 MB -- shmem-mapped

   2.49 MB -- heap-dirty

   2.02 MB -- gfx-surface-win32

   0.32 MB -- canvas-2d-pixel-bytes

   0.01 MB -- gfx-surface-image

   0.00 MB -- gfx-d2d-surfacecache

   0.00 MB -- gfx-d2d-surfacevram

1GB just for javascript?? Am I missing something?

geofftop,

 "get your act together guys and patch these leaks! " 

Wrong forum, this one attempts to answer specific support requests, developers rarely look at or comment on this forum. You may be interested in these blogs from one of the developers http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/

errolt,
You could consider posting a comment in Nicholas Nethercote's blog. You may have discovered a problem that may be worth investigation.

John99,

I don't feel that a blog is the place to post something like that as I can't comment to a blog entry that is directly related to the data, because comments are disabled, so I will have to comment on something unrelated...

But thanks for the suggestion.

errolt,
If you run firefox 7.0.1 in safe mode and see climbing memory results that are reproducible file a bug. Normally I would suggest testing on a nightly version, but that currently has a known issue anyway. I still think it would be appropriate to make a comment on the latest developer's blog, if you are certain there is a problem.

At the very least start your own thread on this forum so full specific details may be given. I assume you edited the about:memory results:

─695.60 MB (51.94%) -- compartment(https://secure)
─228.33 MB (17.05%) -- compartment(http://secure)

That could be a site related issue, is that hotmail? Presumably you are editing out your email address. Even if it is a site related issue, it is a site that is going to be very important to many Firefox users.

John99,

I only edited it to try and format the comment properly. It was something like compartment(https://secure.shared.live.com/_D/F$Live...).

I will restart firefox in safe mode and let it run overnight while logged into hotmail. Will post here when I open a separate thread...

Thanks for the confirmation that i'm not just being picky about memory usage... :)

Finding this thread today was a Godsend! Besides providing entertainment as I browsed years of postings, it turned me on to a solution to FF’s memory leak problem: Chrome!

I’m not a super techie. I can’t be bothered with hours of researching and diagnostics. I just want a browser that works as advertised and with minimal babysitting on my part. That’s why I download FF & IE, use them, then dutifully upgrade when I’m warned to do so or when they start to perform poorly. But FF’s memory leak problem persists no matter which version I use (from 3.0 to 7.0).

So today I Google’d “Firefox memory leaks” and was blown away by how pervasive the problem is. But more important, I found a solution that was mentioned in many posts: Chrome.

I downloaded Chrome and started using it. Can something so simple and swift really be true? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I’m abandoning FF. It boggles my mind that an obvious FF problem continues unresolved.

Beleaguered users can continue to complain and FF developers can continue to point to a myriad of elusive causes and dizzying corrective actions for the memory leaks. Thanks, but I’ll bow out of the pissing contest and just use Chrome.

John99,

I posted a new question here: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/892214

Thanks, Errol

Thanks Errol,

Noted but I have not got time to look at the moment, it is a special day on the forum today hopefully you will get some heavyweight attention anyway.

I think you'll find, Chris, if you have a computer and this thing called "Google", that there are 260,000 results for the phrase "Firefox memory leak". There are 330,000 results for the phrase "Firefox is slow", and 31 MILLION results for the phrase "I hate firefox."

I guess all those people are running the wrong add-ons, eh? Get real.

This leak occurs across all platforms, all hardware builds, and all manner of add-ons, plugins, and setups. It disregards gender, sexual preference, and religion. In fact, the only thing the leak has in common is one piece of software: Firefox.

The.

Browser.

Now, I'm just a bit annoyed at people like you. The reason is that you're spending way more time than you should DEFENDING the browser instead of finding ways to FIX the browser. This is not operator error. It's not add-ons causing the leaks, it's the base browser not releasing the memory. Developers have known about this since FF 3.6.1 and done squat other than to claim it ain't THEIR problem, it's all those add-ons you people run.

This ignores two facts:

1) Add-ons are a large part of the reason people CHOOSE Firefox. If the browser can't handle them, why run it? FIX THE BROWSER.

and 2) Pick five people with the memory leak problem. No two of them will have the same add-ons installed. Claiming add-ons is causing the problem is like claiming Obama is competent: saying it in a loud and firm voice doesn't make it true.

Worse, claiming the problem is in the add-ons when it's in the browser also means NO ONE IS TRYING TO ACTUALLY FIX THE PROBLEM!

My wife and I are running two different versions of Win7 on two different architectures. Her CLEAN INSTALL OF FF 7.0.1 WITH NO EXTENSIONS OR ADD-ONS leaks memory, as does my newly-installed FF8 with adbock, memory fox, zotero, and others.

In fact, the memory leak was so bad on my mac that I completely scrapped FF and went back to Safari, a browser I hate more than beets (and I really hate beets).

So, to everyone out there in the Firefox world: stop answering questions about the Firefox memory leak with "it's your add-ons." We all know that's NOT the cause, and you're going to continue to drive users to Chrome and BACK to Internet Explorer (The horror!) as long as you continue to pretend the problem isn't the real one. That you've known about.

For five years.

Just fix it.

The memory leak problem IS a fact. Tried all the possibilities that came to mind, including the basic ones, like disabling all Add-ons and enabling 1 by 1... even removed 80% of disabled add-ons.

I have two machines: 1 with win-XP sp3 1 with win-7 64bits

Now... SAME firefox (exactly!)

Win XP machine: 40 tabs opened, all day long use... memory is being EATEN by firefox... 2 hours of use (or not!) it eats up to 1.5gb! Then... SLOW SLOW SLOW and CRASH. Every day i have 2 or 3 crashes.

Win 7 machine - eats some memory, but much more usable... memory rarely goes up 1gb.

I'm a firefox user since v2, but i'm really tired of this. Firefox is not what it used to be and everyday i loose precious time Killing the FF task and restarting it...