**Solved - AVG bug** Firefox continues to stream video...even after closing down.

[Engineer]

Update: AVG is the culprit. See update here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36374357&postcount=29

I have one PC that Firefox (latest version but it's been doing it for some time now) keeps streaming ALL videos, even once closed, in the background. If I go to Youtube, open and start playing 10 videos, and close them all including all instances of Firefox, the PC network shows a huge download. I used Netlimiter to track it to Firefox (doesn't even show up in task manager as running).

I can kill it with the trial version of Netlimiter Pro but that's just a bandaid. Can't find much about this other than it seems to have randomly occured over the years with Firefox users.

I've tried in safe mode as well as a full uninstall (removed folder) and reinstall. Once I open and close the videos, they ALL will continue to stream in the background until complete. I have to either kick them out with Netlimiter Pro or reboot.

I can't find any other program to uninstall that is responsible for this. Netlimiter always shows the process that's streaming as Firefox (again, not shown in Task Manager).
Anyone with any experience with this and any fixes?

 

[ImpulsE69]

Is it firefox or the adobe flash plugin, because the adobe plugin is horrible and hangs and continues running all the time after firefox is closed.

 

[Engineer]

Is it firefox or the adobe flash plugin, because the adobe plugin is horrible and hangs and continues running all the time after firefox is closed.

Wouldn't the safe mode eliminate the plugin? Also, Netlimiter shows it as Firefox but again, that could be misleading. I'm going to be testing various things on and off. I just hate that I am stuck waiting for a background video to get finish streaming when it's not being displayed.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I don't think safe mode would or you wouldn't be able to play video...at least not with flash (like youtube for instance).

 

[Engineer]

I don't think safe mode would or you wouldn't be able to play video...at least not with flash (like youtube for instance).

Sounds right. I'm not sure that I did safe mode right anyway (found online to start Firefox with the - P option but didn't see anything different about it. Just found the real way to start Safe Mode so I'll try that soon).

 

[Ketchup]

Hmm. I just tested this with the app you mentioned an five simultaneous YouTube videos. When I closed Firefox, network traffic was down to zero within 3 seconds.

Try it with a browser like IE and see if the problem persists.

 

[Engineer]

Hmm. I just tested this with the app you mentioned an five simultaneous YouTube videos. When I closed Firefox, network traffic was down to zero within 3 seconds.

Try it with a browser like IE and see if the problem persists.

It doesn't with IE or Chrome (but I love FF for the most part and would rather keep it if I can). Glad I don't currently have ISP caps as I'm sure this isn't helping in that department.

 

[Ketchup]

It doesn't with IE or Chrome (but I love FF for the most part and would rather keep it if I can). Glad I don't currently have ISP caps as I'm sure this isn't helping in that department.

Ok, it's probanly one of your ad-ons then.

 

[Engineer]

From the looks of it, Safe Mode disables "Add-ons" but doesn't effect Extensions (i.e. Flash, etc) so that's why Safe Mode did nothing (and videos still play in Safe Mode) as I only had two add-on's (one of them being AdBlock Plus). Now to see if it's an extension error (i.e. Flash (probably) or something else in FF).

 

[lxskllr]

Try not using Flash. I have an addon button that disables Flash(intuitively named Flash Disable :^D ), and I very seldom have to turn it on. YouTube will work without Flash, and better sites are following suit.

 

[zebrax2]

This has also happened to me. Definitely flash's fault

How do guys make it so the screen doesn't go to standby when playing html5 videos? This has kept me from switching to html5 with youtube.

 

[Ketchup]

From the looks of it, Safe Mode disables "Add-ons" but doesn't effect Extensions (i.e. Flash, etc) so that's why Safe Mode did nothing (and videos still play in Safe Mode) as I only had two add-on's (one of them being AdBlock Plus). Now to see if it's an extension error (i.e. Flash (probably) or something else in FF).

What Flash are you running in FF?

 

[lxskllr]

This has also happened to me. Definitely flash's fault

How do guys make it so the screen doesn't go to standby when playing html5 videos? This has kept me from switching to html5 with youtube.

Jiggle the mouse every so often :^D

I don't watch much (long)video, so that works well enough.

 

[Morbus]

From the looks of it, Safe Mode disables "Add-ons" but doesn't effect Extensions (i.e. Flash, etc) so that's why Safe Mode did nothing (and videos still play in Safe Mode) as I only had two add-on's (one of them being AdBlock Plus). Now to see if it's an extension error (i.e. Flash (probably) or something else in FF).

You're all mixed up, but alright.

I don't know about safe mode these days, but I know add-ons are the whole thing, extensions, plugins, themes, personas, search engines, whatever.

What probably ahppens is safe mode disables extensions, but not the other add-ons.

 

[Engineer]

You're all mixed up, but alright.

I don't know about safe mode these days, but I know add-ons are the whole thing, extensions, plugins, themes, personas, search engines, whatever.

What probably ahppens is safe mode disables extensions, but not the other add-ons.

You're right, it disables extensions (Adblock plus, etc. under the extensions tab) but not the plugins (Flash, acrobat, etc). I just tried tests and confirmed that I have to turn off Flash manually. Once I get back to that PC, I'll do more tests. This PC doesn't exhibit the same issues on video streaming.

 

[ninaholic37]

I can't find any other program to uninstall that is responsible for this. Netlimiter always shows the process that's streaming as Firefox (again, not shown in Task Manager).

Interesting that it shows up as Firefox.exe instead of plugin-container.exe. Have you tried killing plugin-container.exe in Task Manager before Firefox closes?

edit: Why would you only want to watch half of a video (or 10) though? :awe:

 

[Engineer]

Interesting that it shows up as Firefox.exe instead of plugin-container.exe. Have you tried killing plugin-container.exe in Task Manager before Firefox closes?

edit: Why would you only want to watch half of a video (or 10) though? :awe:

My kids click on videos all the times and only watch part of them. I do the same thing depending on the type of video (for example, I was looking for Aaron Harrison's game winning shot in full detail over Wisconsin and many of the video's were commentator videos and not the actual shot). I noticed that as I did this, the video's became slower the more that I clicked. I looked at Task Manager and noticed the my connection was pegged out but I wasn't running anything.

Went to the router and confirmed. Looked at Process Monitor and it didn't give enough detail to see what was going on. Finally downloaded Netlimiter 3 Monitor (freeware) and found Firefox streaming in the background (took a while to figure out what Firefox was doing). The process gave the IP which I backtracked to Youtube (I thought that I had spyware or a virus but none were found using any scan).

Not sure if this effect Netflix or not as I've switched to Chrome for the Chromecasting of the videos to the TV.

There are scattered reports of this on the web but no real pattern as to why or how to fix it.

 

[Engineer]

Turning flash off didn't fix it. I'm starting to wonder if something is installed that I don't know about (caching program, etc). Off to dig some more.

Every Extension and Plugin turned off and still doing the same.

Has got to be something else (unless FF is flawed).

Even reinstall FF (as I said before) did not fix it. Might go back to an older version to see.

Edit: I was wrong on an earlier statement. Chrome and FF both do this. I have not been able to get IE to do this. WTF is going on?

Has to be something hidden.

Edit #2: Even happens in a virtual machine (XP copy of my work laptop on this same PC). I don't know what to make of it.

 

[John Connor]

The audio of Pandora will continue to play for me awhile after I close Pale Moon. That uses flash. Lately the latest version of flash I download a couple week back has been crashing on me. PITA! Wish everything just used HTML 5 and get rid of this flash crap!

Minus the VM, does the work laptop do this?

 

[Ketchup]

So what extensions/plugins are you running?

 

[Engineer]

So what extensions/plugins are you running?

Plugins: AdBlock Plus

Extensions: Flash, silverlight, acrobat, a couple of Nvidia things (installed with graphics driver), couple of Java things (I'm not home - doing from memory).

I turned off EVERYTHING, restarted and still had the issue. Restarted with everything still off in SAFE MODE and still the same issue.

I'm dumbfounded. I can't find anything virus or spyware causing this. It's always listed under Firefox or Chrome as a process, even with those programs closed. IE doesn't seem to do this.

As for Chrome, don't know what I'm running on it. Just installed it a few days ago for Chromecast. Don't even know how to check to see what's running.

 

[Ketchup]

OK, good deal. I know Netlimiter is pointing to FF, but I wonder if the prob is actually outside of your browser. Might want to start looking at other programs that, at one time or another, are streaming data.

 

[Rayb]

Use Sysinternals Process Explorer to trouble shoot what's running after you close FF. It saves a lot guess work and it will pinpoint the source of the problem much easier than task manager.

 

[Mushkins]

You said you're using "a couple Nvidia things." Is one of them potentially configured for hardware acceleration of streaming video? It could be that the stream is being passed off for processing to the Nvidia software which would *not* be told to stop just because you closed the browser process.

That's where i'd look tbh.

 

[Engineer]

You said you're using "a couple Nvidia things." Is one of them potentially configured for hardware acceleration of streaming video? It could be that the stream is being passed off for processing to the Nvidia software which would *not* be told to stop just because you closed the browser process.

That's where i'd look tbh.

I turned off hardware assist in Firefox. No difference.

As for Netlimiter, it points to Firefox when Firefox is stuck in the background streaming and to Chrome when Chrome is stuck in the background streaming. Neither are shown as an open application or process in Task Manager. Netlimiter shows them (grayed out even like they are finishing up). There are usually many processes shown under each but only a few are still streaming (depending on how many videos were shut down before finishing).

I don't know what the hell is happening but will keep on chugging along trying to figure out why.