Category: FireFox
Troubleshooting Firefox problems - Tips to prevent Firefox issues like hanging, reduce memory usage
Common issues associated with Firefox 1.5
1. Sometimes when you try to restore or maximize a Firefox browser window, Firefox doesn’t respond to either mouse clicks or Alt+Tab keys. This is generally due to a memory leak. All you can do is either rightclick the minimized Firefox tab in task bar and click “Close” or kill the firefox.exe process from Windows Task manager and restart Firefox.
2. Did you ever experience Firefox 1.5 crash with the Dr. Watson (drwin.exe) error ? Yes, SessionSaver extension remembers all text your typed in an input text field and saves all open browser tabs in the event of a session error but SessionSaver is not yet ported to Firefox 1.5
3. Firefox may freeze for a moment and then run normally. If you click a hyperlink in Outlook email, Firefox takes a long time to open the webpage and also becomes slow. Or Firefox won’t launch until an existing “firefox.exe” process is killed manually from Task Manager. Sometime if you drag and drop some text on the search bar, Firefox will need be restarted.
Smooth browsing with Firefox - Here, in this guide, we will discuss tips and methods to speedup Firefox launch time, save your Firefox 1.5 from freezing unexpectedly and preventing Firefox crashes.
If Mozilla Firefox hangs as soon as you launch the browser, the issue is probably either with an installed extension or a theme. Try running Firefox in Safe Mode (firefox.exe -safe-mode) - If it runs normally, disable or uninstall the problem causing theme or extension.
Firefox can hang is there is a memory leak. Installing too many extensions or opening lot of browser tabs can hog memory. Disable all extension that you haven’t used since the past week
Sometimes, my Firefox returns an error when I try to download and save pictures from my Yahoo Photos webpage. The problem disappears when I clear download manager history. The memory usage increases greatly after downloading files unless the Download box is ‘cleaned up’ after they finish downloading. To do this automatically, change the download manager’s history setting to remove files from the download manager “upon successful download”.
The Back and Forward button caching functionality -which speeds up the display of recently viewed Web pages can also contribute to memory problems. Disable the fast back/forward caching (bfcache) feature by setting browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0 using about:config.
Adobe Reader browser plugin can consume huge amounts of memory. To disable the Adobe Reader Firefox plugin, open the Firefox plugins directory and delete or rename the nppdf32.dll file.
Firefox can also crash when you close a tab that is loading or playing a Java Applet - Always disable Java plugin, it will also reduce the CPU usage.
In certain configurations, disabling Mouse Gesture in Firefox helps curb memory spikes.
Don’t install Adblock extension with Firefox 1.5 as it causes an increase in Firefox memory usage. Instead use AdBlock Plus.
Setting the browser history to extremely large values will increase memory usage. Keeping the history to a reasonable level is a good idea for this reason.
Install FasterFox tweaking extension - it allows you to prefetch links and tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.
config.trim_on_minimize - If you experience slow startup after long periods of inactivity (minimized Firefox window or other), it is because the Microsoft Windows Operating System reclaims the memory Firefox used in anticipation that other open applications might need it. This can cause a delay when Firefox is restored. Therefox, you can set the config.trim preference to disallow Windows to reclaim memory from a minimized Mozilla application. Always set config.trim_on_minimize to true in Firefox
Other about:com changes to speed up Firefox:
1. Disable prefetch: go to about:config. Search for prefetch, you’ll find network.prefetch-next. Double click it to turn it false if it is on.
2. Limit the memory cache: about:config, new integer, browser.cache.memory.capacity, set it to the memory in KB you want to limit the memory cache to.
I hope these tweaks improve your web browsing experience with Firefox. One last thing, Mozilla has published a list of situations that can lead to massive memory leaks and slow down computers. You can use this to diagnose problem with individual web pages.
- Bad live bookmark causes Firefox memory usage to grow endlessly and make the browser unstable
- Memory leak (especially in graphics-intensive webpages), freed upon minimize
- When saving a picture, HUGE memory leak! Also slows machine down!
- memory leak if page contains a refresh meta-tag
- Memory leak when I leave firefox up with a few sub tabs open
- Firefox begin to eat memory and hangs after opening this URL
- very slow restore from minimize after memory growth compared to other applications
About memory leak - a process that over time can gradually eat away at system resources. In worst-case scenarios, a memory leak could cause an application to become unstable.
Category: Tips and Tricks
Firefox 2.0 since its release had the niggling memory usage and no matter how many updates have been out to address this issue it still has that retard issue. A standard Firefox install without any extensions consumes around 80MB but soon after you add a few extensions you can see a noticeable drop in the performance. There are many guides out over the internet but i have made my own version that seems to work. It gonna be a pretty comprehensive guide so you have a stick a little longer to learn the tricks.
First of all make sure you have the latest version of Firefox, presently 2.0.0.7. If you don’t have which i doubt. You can download using the link below, if you are kind enough grab my referral link.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
- Extension and themes the main cause of memory leaks.
A standard install of Firefox doesn’t seems to show any memory leak issues. But after installing few extensions it seems to show the memory leak issues. Basically this issue occurs due to buggy, bloatware extensions. Also if you overloaded your Firefox with extensions, you can expect high memory usage. Same goes for themes, don’t install too many themes. To minimizes memory issues try testing each plugin one by one for few hours and check over their memory signature. As a result you can always find out the buggy ones and help yourself minimizing the high memory usage. You can even check this comprehensive list of buggy extensions and find out if one of your extension belongs here. Always keep your extensions updated this is another way to cope with the issue.
- Start Firefox in Safe Mode
If one of your extensions is not in that list, boot Firefox into Safe Mode to disable all extensions and themes. You can do this by going to Start > Run, and entering:
firefox -safe-mode
A similar looking box will appear .Now check Disable all add-ons
now click on Continue in Safe Mode. Now fire up your Windows task manager and compare the memory usage before and after disabling the extensions. Normally disabling extensions only drops of couples of MB of RAM.But if you find some memory spikes this surely indicates some problems of either of the extensions or themes installed.
Plugins:
Another memory hogger are the plugins that are needed for open special media or application within Firefox, like Java chat, PDF reader, WMV, Quicktime etc. Here are some links from MozillaZine that offers some basic solutions to plugin related issues.
- Clear your Download History:
- Additional internal settings
The previous tips were simple yet good enough to tame the leakage issue. Now why not some internal tweaks that will boast Firefox performance to some extend. Here is a tip to limit the amount to allocated for caching.
There are a couple of settings you can tweak in Firefox that can limit the amount of memory allocated for caching.
1. Open Firefox and type in about:config in the address bar.
2. Type browser.cache.memory.enable in the Filter Bar and make sure it is enabled. If not, just double click it to set it to enable.
3. Right-click an area of empty space in the browser and choose New > Integer. Type in browser.cache.memory.capacity and click OK.
The integer value you enter depends on the amount of RAM you have.
If you have:
256 MB of RAM, enter “4096”
512 MB of RAM, enter “8192”
1 GB of RAM, enter “16384”
and so forth… Just double the number as your RAM doubles.
4. Right-click anywhere on the window and click New > Bootlean and enter:
config.trim_on_minimize
And set it to true.
By default whenever you minimize an app in Vista the memory usage goes down. But Firefox for some reason doesn’t does that. By using the above setting it will use less when minimized.
5. Restart Firefox for these changes to apply.
- Close Firefox periodically:
Don’t get me wrong. You’d surely don’t like the idea of closing your workspace time and again, same goes for Firefox. With a simple extensions you can save save your internet sessions so when you re-open Firefox, you can have it exactly the way it was before you closed it - the tabs, the cache, everything.You can download Extension Manager here.
Once you have downloaded the extension, we need to set it up. First, we need to get to the options window: Tools > Session Manager > Session Manager Options
Once you’re in the options window, just make sure your screen looks like the one below and you’ll be fine.
Using Portable Firefox has definitely helped minimize my memory usage. You can download Portable Firefox here. For the most part, it runs the same way your regular Firefox does. Here’s a comparison of how much memory each version of Firefox took up: Portable Firefox eats half that of the memory as normal firefox does.
Ordinary Firefox 2.0.0.3:
Portable Firefox 2.0.0.3:
