Plugin-Container.exe begins upon starting Firefox
The moment I double-click my Firefox desktop icon, I check my task manager to see plugin-container/exe starting up before the browser even pops up. This literally just began happening, today. All of my plugins are up-to-date. I also noticed when playing Youtube videos, today, that plugin-container.exe was active during every video I played. I already have a slow computer, so plugin-container.exe running in the background during every video I'm playing makes the site virtually unusable. This has never happened before today. I've intermittently had problems with this program, but it didn't start giving me habitual problems until today. I tried reinstalling Firefox over the existing copy to see if that did anything, and nothing.
A bit of background. Something wiped out my TCP/IP protocol, yesterday, and I had to rebuild the registry. I was able to get my internet connection back. I've ran all kinds of anti-virus and malware programs since then just to be sure, and none of them have turned up anything.
What could be causing plugin-container.exe to pop up in my task manager so much in the last day? I actually had to close out of the program to get the browser to pop-up and load when I double-clicked it. I've included all of my troubleshooting info, below.
All Replies (5)
Read What is plugin-container.
If plugin-container.exe starts when Firefox starts up, that suggests one of the pages that loads when Firefox starts contains plug-in content. That would be either your homepage or previously opened pages, if under Options → General, you've selected "When Firefox starts: Show my windows and tabs from last time".
Given that you're using Windows XP, you can't play HTML5 videos in MP4/H.264 format. Far fewer YouTube videos are in WebM format, so you're probably stuck with Flash Player. You can still try setting Shockwave Flash to Never Activate in the Add-ons Manager, Plugins category, then install the following add-on.
You could try disabling the plug-in container, but I don't recommend it. Without the plug-in container, if a plug-in crashes, the whole browser crashes along with it.
Yahoo.com is my start page. The weird thing is that I only activate the Flash plugin when I need it, so it's very rarely on (basically, only when I go to watch videos at Youtube.com). The plugin is not activated when I first start my browser, so why is plugin-container.exe starting?
Many web pages have pictures, moving pictures, and clips playing in them.
You might want to try out Flash block
Never be annoyed by a Flash animation again! Blocks Flash so it won't get in your way, but if you want
to see it, just click on it.
I've asked you guys some pretty specific questions. I know what Flash is, and I know of plugin-container.exe in passing. My questions, again.
- Why after this program almost never runing in my task manager did it just start popping up everytime I'm on Youtube? This just happened within the last day or two. Plugin-container.exe almost never came up in my task manager, before.
- It's using at least half of what my actual Firefox browser is using rendering even playing low-pixel-quality videos a headache.
I guess what I'm asking is how did this just start, and how can I get rid of it? I'm afraid of disabling it because some people are telling me that firefox then sucks up the memory. I've never had to disable this manually, before, so why now? How in the world in just the past day or two did this pop up as an issue?
I'm honestly not too bothered by browser crashes. Of all the problems I've had with Firefox, browser crashes have been very rare. I've had really long hangs that have made me want to end the process, but crashes are a rare occurrence for me. I just want to get back to where plugin-container.exe isn't showing up regularly on page with video players. This has never happened to me in all the years I've used the browser, which is pretty weird since I've heard plugin-container has been a program running in the background of Firefox for years. Why it was very rarely in my task manager, I don't know, but I want to know so I can get back to that place.
EDIT: I just disabled it by right-clicking on My Computer and going to properties, then going to Advanced and clicking on Environmental Variables. Then, I click New and input MOZ_DISABLE_OOP_PLUGINS and 1 for the value. This seems to disable to plug-in container after I restarted. What I'm noticing is that I'm still having closing out of Firefox (the process runs even when I'm done, this is something else that rarely happened), and it's still taking longer for the browser to pop-up when I double-click my desktop icon. I'm honestly at a lost for what happened a few days ago. All my plugins are shown to be up to date.
EDIT x 2: I just enabled the plug-in container, again, after the previous experiment had my browser just randomly freezing. I'm getting serious lags on really low-quality videos. What's worse is that the plug-in container stays open in my task manager even after I disable flash (I'm using Quick-Java which allows you to turn the plug-ins on and off really easily) and am no longer on a page with videos. Why is this? How can I get it to close once I'm out of Firefox without having to manually end the process in task manager?
Modified by FireFoxFan1
When there's plug-in content on the page, plugin-container.exe runs the plug-in. You either disable the plug-in container for all plug-ins, or just a specific plug-in. There's no such thing as the plug-in container sometimes running for Flash Player and sometimes not.
If there's no plug-in content to run, then plugin-container.exe should go away after sitting around with nothing to do for 3 minutes. It should definitely not be sticking around long after you've closed Firefox.
- Check if you have the same problem in a new profile.
- If everything's okay in a new profile, return to your regular one and reset Firefox.
Also try doing without Flash Player on YouTube.
- Install FlashDisable.
- Install YouTube ALL HTML5.
- Keep Flash Player disabled on YouTube (setting it to Ask to Activate won't work). Many videos will play in HTML5 WebM format (users on Windows Vista or later and Linux get MP4 videos, which are more numerous).
- When you need Flash Player, toggle it using the toolbar button.