Firefox using up to 2.7 GB of RAM - PLEASE HELP - problem going on since many years
Hello, this issue has been repeatedly brought to attention by users and still there is no fix. I use FF since version 5 or 6 and I have always had RAM usage problems. Now, after more than 20 new releases, it is still causing a lot of troubles. I have updated my laptop (8 GB of RAM, new disk and so on, in order to alleviate the burden Firefox is producing). But this memory leak is ridiculous: I have just had FF crashing after it showed 2.7 GB of RAM usage. I repeat: TWO point SEVEN Gigabytes of RAM usage only for Firefox.exe. Besides, I have more than 800 MB used by Flashplayer plugin. I am normally keeping various tabs opened, I think FF is not releasing memory after the tabs have been closed. This is what I can understand from experience. If I open many pages and then close all tabs, the programm is still using a large amount of Ram. System info: Windows 7 professional 64 bit - FF 29.0.1 (Italian version) - Intel core 2 Duo 8600P - 8 GB RAM. Thanks to anyone who is willing to provide help.
All Replies (9)
Wow that's a LOT of RAM usage. Have you looked at these articles yet?
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix
Can you give me your crash reports?
- Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A Submitted Crash Reports list will appear, similar to the one shown below.
- Copy the 5 most recent Report IDs that start with bp- and paste them into your response here.
While you are getting your crash reports, you should try to disable hardware acceleration and see if it helps any.
Firefox has hardware acceleration set to "on" by default, but it's still young, which means some video cards or drivers might have problems with it. You can try to disable hardware acceleration to see if that alleviates your problems.
You might need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).
Then perform these steps for Firefox version 29.0 and above:
- Click the menu button
and select Options for Windows or Preferences on Mac or Linux. For Firefox 28.0 and previous versions, click the orange Firefox button at the top left, then select the "Options" button, or, if there is no Firefox button at the top, go to Tools > Options.
- In the Firefox options window, click the Advanced tab, then select "General".
- In the settings list, you should find the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox. Uncheck this checkbox.
- Now, restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.
Additionally, please check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in the following Knowledge base articles:
Hello Moses, thanks a lot for your speedy reply. Here below you can find the requested reports. I will check the links you cited and see if disabling hadware acceleration improves the situation. Will report tomorrow or as soon as possible. Please let me know if you need other info, Best regards
bp-59cc39d3-d26f-475b-ae63-2e1672140510 10/05/2014 23:44 c65002e6-c825-4be3-be6d-dc6fe7f7b78e 05/05/2014 04:57 277009c5-a379-4d50-9e73-ca2119d41fe4 28/04/2014 11:34 2e78f0f7-c787-46b3-a68f-437a11050084 26/04/2014 11:04 32c54a7d-c2dd-4278-8912-81450676bd38 26/04/2014 10:27 a627a6fe-578e-4e68-b85d-812c39c0e723 21/04/2014 22:14
Hi,
I looked at your crash report and there's a bug filed for the crash signature already. Reading from it, it looks like this issue was fixed in Firefox 30 (which is in Beta right now) but it didn't make it into Firefox 29.
This comment is from one of the people who worked on the bug
Actually, "js::gc::CrashAtUnhandlableOOM(char const*) | js::types::TypeObject::sweep(js::FreeOp*)" is there on 29, as expected given this patch did not land there (and the skiplist changes adding the second frame).
This bug fix should land when 30 is released. You might want to consider downloading the Beta and see if you have less crashes and memory issues there. You can download the beta at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/beta/. You can simply install it over the current version of Firefox.
Hi, in the past days I tried to disable hardware acceleration and also tried to install a couple of memory plugins. No effect on the problem. Usage of Ram was constantly around 1-1.5 GB. When I upgraded to FF 30 as you suggested, things got even worse. Two minutes ago I checked the task manager and I read 2.2 GB for firefox.exe and 2 GB for the Flashplayer plugin. If I kill the flash process there is no change in the memory firefox uses. I see that firefox stub installer is still running, is that normal? Beta version installed at the moment seems up to date.
I mean, you have read also this article. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak
Hello Zoli62, yes I recall reading that page a long time ago and having tried all those workarounds. None seemed to help in my case. I got the upgrade to beta 30.0.5 and after a couple of crashes (see below), now it seems to me a little bit better. RAM usage is still around 1.3 GB, but at least it doesn't look like flash plugin is hogging a lot of memory (270 MB at the moment).
de694a96-0234-4d18-a9b7-3bfde55484b0 15/05/2014 15:06
47f4ff7f-0959-4c10-a3ae-8a179e05fd92 15/05/2014 14:34
Have you read also this? https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-pluss-effect-on-firefoxs-memory-usage/
Thanks for the hint Zoli, but I don't use Ad Block... the only extension I currently use is Flash On Off 0.3.1