Firefox memory hogging/leak in XP - normal, or just my machine?

Harlequin

Harlequin

n00b
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
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I was hoping this would go away with the new version, but it's no different - when I open pages in new windows (which is frequently), Firefox doesn't release the extra memory those pages used when I close them. After a while (a day or more), this means that Firefox could be using nearly a gigabyte (RAM+swap) on my 512mb machine just to be viewing a single webpage (no tabs, no extra windows), at which point, even just clicking links (not opening them in new windows) will be quite a lengthy grind.

Does anyone know what's going on here? Internet Explorer worked the way I would expect - the RAM requirement is based roughly on your open pages, closing extra windows brings it down. In Firefox, closing windows actually INCREASES the ram used! The ram usage goes up and up for almost anything, but rarely ever comes down, and even then only briefly before returning to roughly where it was. (Eg, closing all windows but one, the RAM (not swapfile) might decrease from 180Mb to 24Mb then wander back up to 150Mb over the next 30 seconds. The Swapfile component would increase by a few meg and not decrease at all.

I had a clueless poke around in the "about:config" page, but couldn't find any entries related to memory, ram, swap, page, etc.

Any ideas?
 
1.0.1 and 1.0.2 were small security updates, which is why nothing's been done about the memory leak. 1.1 might have something, but so far the big news about 1.1 is a redesigned preferences window and updates to Gecko.

Go to about:config, right-click, hit New -> Integer, type browser.cache.memory.capacity, hit OK, enter some MB value you want Firefox to allocate for itself--I'm using 65536 personally. Make sure browser.cache.memory.enable is set to true, also.
 
If you load lots of pictures in rapid succession, and your memory latency is falling short of the norm for some reason, I could see you having problems with Firefox, or any other program for that matter that is used under the same circumstances. You might even see some stop errors, but in a modern machine that shouldn't be the case.
 
Modern machine (it was a very high-end laptop a year ago), not loading lots of pictures, nor in rapid succession, just normal browsing.
How unusual is the problem? I know I've looked around and I now know I'm not the only person to have it. The only thing potentially out of the ordinary with my system is that it runs the Tablet Edition of XP, but theoretically that shouldn't be relevant - it's basically XP Profesional plus some extra bells and whistles.
 
I would say that it is very unusual. Me? I would uninstall Firefox, deleting everything associated, and then reinstall, after defragmenting the laptop. Then, I would add back the extensions one at a time, testing the install between extension installs for a few days. Back with one of the nightly builds, I had problems that turned out to be caused by an extension that I was using. You could save the bookmarks someplace, but I'd dump everything else.
 
Terpfen said:
Go to about:config, right-click, hit New -> Integer, type browser.cache.memory.capacity, hit OK, enter some MB value you want Firefox to allocate for itself--I'm using 65536 personally. Make sure browser.cache.memory.enable is set to true, also.
Click to expand...

;) thanx
I'll see how that goes

(and this isnt a modern box)
 
One feature that I do not like is the little box that comes up from the bottom that tells you when a download is complete. It seems redundant to me because the status is already shown in the Download Manager. This alert can be toggled to off at about:config for those of you who also don't like it.

I believe about:config should be explored fully, if you want to really tweak Firefox. There are many things you can do there. I keep finding little ways to make it quicker.

This link discusses the memory issue that is the reason for this thread. It also has several good tweaks.
http://www.sfbg.com/tech/firefox_install.html
 
^^^
Well I find the download manager bugging me so I just close it and when a download is done then the little window pops its little head up and notifies me that it's complete...so I find it a nice little feature...I guess different ppl have different tastes...
 
besides the download manager is generally buried under a half dozen other windows on my box
 
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