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Firefox 5.0 Final is out!!!

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I'm having problems with Firefox 5.0 on my Win 7 Athlon II X3 box. Every so often it just hangs, as if there is heavy disk thrashing or a wayward script, and then it comes back again after 20 seconds or so.

I wondered if I was running out of memory, but the Windows CPU/memory gadget would say only about 50-70% of my memory was used, out of 4 GB. Nonetheless I upgraded the machine to 8 GB. Unfortunately, that solved nothing. Same hangs, which I never got in Firefox 4.

Since then I've just switched to Chrome. So far so good, but I haven't been using it for long.
 
Eug said:
I'm having problems with Firefox 5.0 on my Win 7 Athlon II X3 box. Every so often it just hangs, as if there is heavy disk thrashing or a wayward script, and then it comes back again after 20 seconds or so.

I wondered if I was running out of memory, but the Windows CPU/memory gadget would say only about 50-70% of my memory was used, out of 4 GB. Nonetheless I upgraded the machine to 8 GB. Unfortunately, that solved nothing. Same hangs, which I never got in Firefox 4.

Since then I've just switched to Chrome. So far so good, but I haven't been using it for long.
Click to expand...

I am getting the same thing over and over again just like you. A friend of mine who works in the IT field answered my very same inquiry and here is what he wrote me today:

"FF RAM usage keeps building up, so I have to restart it once in a while, if I'm using FF for a longer time.
Check Task manager for firefox.exe RAM usage.
If that's not the case, it may be some add-on(s).
If you're using Firefox 3.x, close Firefox. Go Start>All Programs>Mozilla Firefox, click on Mozilla Firefox (safe mode).
If you're using Firefox 4, or 5 go Help>Restart Firefox with Add-ons Disabled.
Same issue?"
 
Interestingly, overall RAM usage in the machine jumped to well over 40% with FF active for a couple of hours, even after I installed a total of 8 GB RAM.

With Chrome I've been running it for the last couple of hours and I'm still sitting at 20% overall RAM usage.

I don't have any weird add-ons. I do use Flash and Adobe Reader.

Anyways, I'm looking at FF and Chrome side by side in the Windows Task Manager right now, and RAM usage for FF just keeps climbing. In fact, with just 1 page open (and now with all other tabs closed), firefox.exe *32 is using well over 300 MB. WTF? Memory leak?

I've just been using FF for ten minutes. I opened a bunch of windows and tabs, which got it up to about 200 MB or so, and then closed everything down except one window. Memory just keeps climbing. In fact, now I'm over 360 MB, just a few minutes later. In contrast, Chrome has less than 200 MB usage with a few windows and lots of tabs open. Memory usage is stable.
 
So I closed down all the Windows for both browsers except one for comparison, and had both Chrome and Firefox loaded on this page.

Chrome was hovering around 70 MB with four tasks combined in the Task Manager, stable. Memory only increased when I opened up a new window to load this Anandtech forum, and it's now at just over 100 MB.

With the single FF task on that same page, it's now at over 600 MB. For a single web page. Yowza.

Firefox5memoryleak.jpg


BTW, I used FF to go to Photobucket and upload the above picture. At the time of this writing, Firefox is over 700 MB.
 
In Ubuntu, I'm using 240mb for Opera, and 180mb for Firefox with the same number of tabs open(11), and similar content.
 
Eug said:
Interestingly, overall RAM usage in the machine jumped to well over 40% with FF active for a couple of hours, even after I installed a total of 8 GB RAM.

With Chrome I've been running it for the last couple of hours and I'm still sitting at 20% overall RAM usage.

I don't have any weird add-ons. I do use Flash and Adobe Reader.

Anyways, I'm looking at FF and Chrome side by side in the Windows Task Manager right now, and RAM usage for FF just keeps climbing. In fact, with just 1 page open (and now with all other tabs closed), firefox.exe *32 is using well over 300 MB. WTF? Memory leak?

I've just been using FF for ten minutes. I opened a bunch of windows and tabs, which got it up to about 200 MB or so, and then closed everything down except one window. Memory just keeps climbing. In fact, now I'm over 360 MB, just a few minutes later. In contrast, Chrome has less than 200 MB usage with a few windows and lots of tabs open. Memory usage is stable.
Click to expand...

Confirmation! Thanks for this because I thought either my machine was failing somewhere or I was deeply infected. I'm going to pass it onto my friend.

Is Fire Fox even aware of this issue? Edit Update: Yes, it is a memory leak and yes FF is aware of it. The complaints are many.
 
Last edited:
lxskllr said:
In Ubuntu, I'm using 240mb for Opera, and 180mb for Firefox with the same number of tabs open(11), and similar content.
Click to expand...
I don't get this problem with Firefox 5.0 on Windows XP either.

I wonder if it's specific to Windows 7.
 
I agree, Firefox is a memory hog. It is using 315,550K right now (XP Pro) with only 3 full windows open.
1 window has 2 tabs, so 5 web sessions. Also it some times does not shut itself down and has to be closed in task manager manually.
 
Why do people use FF with all the problems? Hasn't it had a memory leak for years??

Why would anyone put it on their parents machine???
 
jjmIII said:
Why do people use FF with all the problems? Hasn't it had a memory leak for years??

Why would anyone put it on their parents machine???
Click to expand...

Some people prefer it. No browser is perfect. Also, The leak only really occurs when you leave the window open for a long period of time. Personally, my parents (and parents-in-laws) always close down their browser once hey are done with it.
 
I've used Firefox since V0.7, and the only memory leaks I've had were from a couple Nightly builds(on Ubuntu) earlier this year. I suspect it was Flash misbehaving, but I never tracked it down.
 
I use it since with all the addons available, I can get it pretty much the way I like it.
Only issues besides the memory is IETAB has some glitches, in that it tries to load
all pages in IE mode. And you can not rearrange the order of TABS in Firefox (or if you
can I have not figured it out yet) On my computer, sometimes the open windows in the
Taskbar disappear, but they are in fact still open. Very odd behavior (XP PRO SP3)
 
I am using Firefox 5.0.1 on Windows XP Pro without any problems and I have not noticed any memory problems either. I will experiment with opening lots of Tabs and leaving my Computer on longer to see if I get a memory problem.
 
FYI, .NET Framework Assistant was released by Microsoft for FF 5 a couple of weeks ago.

Was driving me nuts having to find workarounds for all of my apps that use it and broke when I upgraded from 4 to 5.
 
jjmIII said:
Why do people use FF with all the problems? Hasn't it had a memory leak for years??

Why would anyone put it on their parents machine???
Click to expand...
Like I said before I only see this problem on my Win 7 box. I don't get this on my Win XP box.
Also, I never had this problem in FF 4 on either machine.
 
firefox 6 should be hitting anytime now and 7 shortly after that. 7 does make memory improvements as i am running aurora 7 right now, but i never really had memory problems the others in this thread are talking about. that is on windows 7 X64 too
 
Why does memory even matter? All that I care about is that Firefox becomes faster (in startup) and more responsive. That's what matters.
 
ieatdonuts said:
Why does memory even matter? All that I care about is that Firefox becomes faster (in startup) and more responsive. That's what matters.
Click to expand...
Because when Firefox gets too big, it can slow down the rest of your computer, and it can slow down itself too.

ie. Memory leaks can cause everything to be less responsive.
 
Eug said:
Because when Firefox gets too big, it can slow down the rest of your computer, and it can slow down itself too.

ie. Memory leaks can cause everything to be less responsive.
Click to expand...

This and freezing your system requiring you at times to reboot your system. I never had these issues with FF 3.xx.
 
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