Why does Firefox keep launching 3, 4, 5 incidences of itself (in task manager) - slowly but consistently increases over time.
Firefox originally opened one "task" in task manager and worked fine. Later, it started opening two "incidences" or itself, and crashed if I tried to close one. Then the number rose to three, and today it opened 5 'tasks' in task manager, each one using enough operating memory to run the entire program as a stand alone function. Is this a bug or something that 'needs' to happen due to upgrades?
I also noticed that Firefox program folders were all updated today when I went in looking for a 'culprit' and that makes it hard for me to track down. I also notice in properties that five Firefox version changes have loaded to my computer in the last week.
I do not like this - what do you recommend?
Vahaolana nofidina
In the Windows 7 Task Manager, the Applications tab should have a Firefox instance for each open window, while the Processes tab should have 2 to 5 instances of firefox.exe. The reason for the variable number is the multiprocess feature which isolates content from the user interface into one process, then uses between 1 and 4 processes for web pages. This helps prevent a crash caused by the content of one tab from crashing the entire browser, but it does use somewhat more memory than putting everything in one huge bucket.
Hamaky an'ity valiny ity @ sehatra 👍 2All Replies (5)
Same here.
Vahaolana Nofidina
In the Windows 7 Task Manager, the Applications tab should have a Firefox instance for each open window, while the Processes tab should have 2 to 5 instances of firefox.exe. The reason for the variable number is the multiprocess feature which isolates content from the user interface into one process, then uses between 1 and 4 processes for web pages. This helps prevent a crash caused by the content of one tab from crashing the entire browser, but it does use somewhat more memory than putting everything in one huge bucket.
Is there a way to stop that?
In Firefox 49-55 you could switch back to single process using the following steps, but I don't know if this is still applicable. You could give it a try.
To help evaluate whether the Multiprocess (e10s) feature is causing problems, you could turn it off as follows:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.
(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste autos and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 preference to switch the value from true to false
Note: the exact name of the preference(s) may vary, but it will start with browser.tabs.remote.autostart
At your next Firefox startup, it should run in the traditional way. Any difference?
I hate "be careful" buttons, but it's worth a try. It appears that these "multiples" are eating up too much processing power and actually causing more crashes (I get more low-memory warnings and crashes since this started as well).