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Firefox pauses.

F

fleggett

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
546
For some time now, probably ever since the 3.x.x releases, I've noticed some very strange behavior from Firefox. Namely, at regular, almost stopwatch intervals, it'll pause for about a second before responding to user input. What's even odder is that the CPU fan revs up during the pause, then un-revs back down to its normal rpm.

Has anyone noticed this? I've encountered this on multiple platforms running various iterations of Windows. It doesn't happen immediately. It takes several hours with multiple open windows, but when it hits, it hits hard. I've heard of some pretty serious memory leaks in the 3.x.x compiles, but even if that was true, I don't understand why a memory leak would cause this sort of bizarre behavior.

It should be noted that sound is not affected when streaming video (like on YouTube), but video is. I've not seen this happen in IE (any version) and it doesn't crop up in games. Only in Firefox, which, frustratingly, is my browser of choice.

I'm currently running Win7 x64 (Ultimate), but as I wrote, it seems system/Windows independent. I have installed a handful of extensions (which leaves me wondering if one of them could be the culprit), but I mainly wanted to see if others have seen something similar.
 
It could be one of the extensions.

I would uninstall everything, go into the program files and application data folders & delete everything left behind. Then reinstall new firefox and each extension one by one. Or list them all here and we can help find the culprit for you.

Also make sure to rule out background tasks & spyware/virus/etc.
 
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I've looked at task manager, but nothing seems to spike, not even Firefox. It seems to be happening within Firefox itself without hogging any CPU cycles, but tripping the CPU fan.

Regarding the extensions, this is what I have installed:

Amazon Wish List 1.1
Coral IE Tab 1.85.somelongnumber
Download Statusbar 0.9.6.8
FireFTP 1.0.7
FoxLingo 2.6.1
Xmarks 3.6.7

Yeah, I need to perform my due diligence and do the necessary steps to isolate what could be causing this. I'll uninstall my current Firefox setup and install a fresh copy, see what happens, and go from there.
 
If all other things are ruled out I would subtract foxlingo for a round and see if the symptom improves.
 
Happens on my system as well. I was actually just thinking about it too.

Happens when I scroll up and down and it's happening now as I type this.

I have 8 tabs open and Firefox is using 1GB of ram.
 
No CPU usage indicated by OS but CPU fan revving up = spyware/virus/rootkit.
 
mine shows spikes on all 4 cores when it happens.
 
I had a problem like this with FF but I was planning on reinstalling the OS anyways so I just did that and obviously the problem went away.
 
Zepher said:
Happens on my system as well. I was actually just thinking about it too.

Happens when I scroll up and down and it's happening now as I type this.

I have 8 tabs open and Firefox is using 1GB of ram.
Click to expand...

I was getting the same pausing while scrolling up and down - on the Mac OS X version on my Mac Mini. Turning on "Use smooth scrolling" made the pauses go away, but I'm not sure if I've cured the problem or just hidden it.
 
Hmmm, so it's not just me, which is comforting (my misery now has some pals).

To rive22 - I looked at Task Manager again and I am seeing CPU spikes. It doesn't get near 100% (only 30%), but I do see a correlation now between the fan revs and the CPU starting to get pegged.

To Zepher - 1GB? Is that normal? That just seems like an incredible amount of memory consumption for just a browser, even if you do have 8 tabs open. I've got 10 windows (not tabs) open now and Firefox is "only" using 548MB (which still seems pretty high).

I haven't had a chance to do a reinstall (yet). I just now uninstalled FoxLingo, though, which required a Firefox restart. Interestingly, even with all 10 windows open, it only consumes 125MB on my system AT THE MOMENT. It then balloons from there, so maybe there is a serious memory leak. Or, I suppose I could be infected with something which is directly or indirectly causing Firefox to eat up more and more memory as time goes on.

(A few minutes later.)

So far, I haven't experienced any pausing or fan revving. I don't know if FoxLingo was the problem or if I haven't let Firefox run long enough for the problem to begin appearing. I should know something in a few hours, though.

evilsofa - did you notice any other pausing on the Mac? Like when watching vids on YouTube or just simply typing text?
 
fleggett said:
evilsofa - did you notice any other pausing on the Mac? Like when watching vids on YouTube or just simply typing text?
Click to expand...

I think I do remember pausing when typing text, but that seems to have all gone away. I don't think I ever saw pausing in Youtube videos though.

Edit: After doodling around with Firefox some more, I find the pauses are still there; maybe I have just gotten so used to them that I don't notice them anymore. As I am typing these sentences, I have had several pauses. Also, when using the back and forward buttons to move between two pages, I reliably get a pause 5 seconds later. I've got a CPU monitoring tool called iStat Menus which is showing large spikes from firefox-bin of up to 50% CPU usage (that would be using an entire core of my dual-core Intel CPU) when the load is normally 3 to 5%.

Since this issue appears to be cross-platform, I think this is purely a Firefox issue.

Edit 2: Restarting the Mac seems to have helped the pause issue. I had been running Firefox for over two weeks without restarting, and Firefox does start to act funny after a few weeks of hard use. No unexplained CPU spikes now.
 
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I've been dealing with this on my Mac Pro. I get stutters when typing text, scrolling pages and watching videos. CPU usage of a single core hits 100% for a second then everything goes back to normal. I've disabled extensions and closed all tabs. Nothing works. If I close Firefox and reopen it, performance is back again for a little bit. I've basically decided to force myself to switch to Chrome.
 
And now I'm seeing it again, a day after I had to restart FF after uninstalling FoxLingo. Fan revving, scroll pauses, text input pauses, streaming video pauses - you name it. It only lasts for about a second, but man is it an ANNOYING second.

It should also be mentioned that my FF memory footprint has effectively doubled in size since the last I looked (now at 300MB - before it was only 125MB). So,unless it's doing a tremendous amount of caching, something definitely feels wrong in FF land.

I can't really devote the resources necessary to pin down this bug, so I'll just do a wipe and start from scratch with NO extensions whatsoever. If the pausing begins again, I'll probably just resign to use IE from now on. Maybe play around with Chrome.

I would love to know if the Mozilla devs are aware of anything resembling this behavior.
 
Did you uninstall and delete everything left behind then reinstall? Some of those extensions leave all their files behind and their code in the prefs javascript file. I would wipe it dry and reinstall the newest version.

The quickest way is uninstall first then just run to search on your C drive and type mozilla. Delete everything that pops up especially the folders & their contents. You will likely have to take ownership and allow modify of the documents & settings and hidden program data folders first.

Did you check for virus/spyware? bc that could very much be the case too.

I would run your virus scan
Spybot
&malwarebytes

All of them. Then report back :)

yes and backup your bookmarks first. export to html file.
 
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I am having this problem to, and this is on a fresh install with a 2500k, SATAIII SSD 16GB of RAM and cache files on a RAM drive. (Win7 x6x lite)

Same thing, every once so often I get a small pause and a corresponding spike in CPU usage by firefox. Seems like it's fine right after power on but develops later in a session.

Addons are noscript, adblock plus, firegestures, skype click to call, and lazarus.

Let's figure this out!
 
Okay I am at most half an hour into my session and I am starting to notice the micro pauses. They are very small at the moment but I know if I keep 5-10 tabs open for a few hours they will get much more noticable. Especially irritating when watching video. Seems pretty regular most of the time to me. About ~10 sec interval.
 
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Maybe it's a particular site you frequent that causes this? perhaps a crappy flash applet working in the background? I'd recommend flashblock for testing that.
How about taking a look at about:memory to see any websites hogging?
Just a few random ideas.
 
I have 16GB of memory. Happens across all sites.

Pretty sure it's a problem with firefox itself since I don't have any of the plugins the other guy has.
 
I have the same issue and definately believe its a firefox problem. Happens regardless of what addons I have enabled.
 
Well color me corrected. Disabled addons. Seems to be fixed. So far re-enabled noscript and no pausing yet. Trying firegestures now.
 
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