Firefox cause hd thrash

[PookyBoy]

Say I have a few tabs open in Firefox then I switch to some other program for a while. Then when I click Firefox again, it causes the hd to thrash like crazy and takes a long time before I can actually use it again. I use Opera too and this doesn't happen, even with more tabs open, it doesn't take long to load before I can use it again. Not even Photoshop takes that long to resume.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

 

[bersl2]

The process is swapping out and in again, and maybe swapping something else out at the same time.

I would tell you to try to tweak the PF, but I can already tell you what everybody's going to say: "Don't do that."

You can cut the size of Firefox's image in memory by disabling the memory portion of the cache (turn off browser.cache.memory.enable at about:config), which will force the cache to be entirely on-disk. This will make loads from cache slower, but it may be a trade you want to consider.

 

[Nothinman]

If you're minimizing FF, stop that. Windows automatically trims the working set on minimized apps and FF does some 'magic' to make it free more memory at the cost of a longer restore time. I believe there's also a setting you can add to your FF config to make it not do that, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.

 

[MustPost]

I have a similar problem. Same symptoms, but on an ibook G4. Sometimes it goes on for 30 seconds to a minute.