Every time I use Firefox to access SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/) the browser freezes and I get a 'Firefox not responding' message. What up with that?
When listening to music on SoundCloud.com Firefox often freezes within a few minutes of use. When I open task manager to see what is happening, there is always a Firefox not responding message and the memory usage and CPU usage have both escalated to very high percentages. At least double and often triple memory usage for other programs The other memory hog is Mozilla Thunderbird. Not sure why Mozilla products consistently use ridiculous amounts of memory (I removed Firefox from my smart phone because memory consumption also resulted in slow performance and battery drain). This happens no matter how many tabs are open. When I kill the program with task manager, it usually performs normally for a few minutes and sometimes for an hour without a problem. I do not have Chrome installed on my computer. When I did (Avast antivirus insists on Chrome) I would get a script message when using SoundCloud via Firefox: chrome//wrc/content/common/scripts/bal.js:1520. I have clicked the Do not use Chrome as default browser in the Avast settings, but that didn't prevent Firefox crashing when using visiting SoundCloud. So I uninstalled Avast and reinstalled without Chrome. This problem with SoundCloud persists, regardless. My flashplayer is up to date. This is a Firefox issue. Period.
All Replies (6)
We're sorry to hear that Firefox is crashing. In order to assist you better, please follow the steps below to provide us crash IDs to help us learn more about your crash.
- Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A Submitted Crash Reports list will appear, similar to the one shown below.
- Copy the 5 most recent Report IDs that start with bp- and then go back to your forum question and paste that into the "Post a Reply" box. (Please don't take a screenshot of your crashes, just copy and paste the ID's. The below image is just an example of what your Firefox screen should look like)
Thank you for your help!
More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.
Firefox just crashed twice while on SoundCloud. I did as instructed (about:crashes). Only 1 was listed (from March) so I'm afraid your advice was useless. SoundCloud kicks Firefox's ass every time I launch it. This is abnormal to say the least. I AM NOT an I.T. IF you can't work through this problem, I will be looking for another browser. Maybe you have a suggestion? I've given you enough information to suss the problem. You apparently don't find it worth your interest. Why is Firefox such a memory hog? I suspect the answer lies in the writing. This is not an elegantly written program. Think floppy disc. How many would you need to distribute 1 copy of Firefox . . ?
I remember the times when windows came on a few floppy disks...
Thanks to ever increasing ressources on computers, coding became extremely bloated.
I think it often is lazy programming (I'm a programmer myself). Other times the OS dictates certain ways of coding/interaction that are just ressource unfriendly. Yet other times it is stuffing too much unneeded functionality into your application.
Still, it is possible to write lean and ressource friendly code. It just takes more time, more effort, more qualification and ultimately more money to do so...
Modified by DigitalBlade
You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.
- Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.
This is precisely the problem. Lazy, sloppy, inelegant programming (browsers and websites). I have a friend who wrote a 3D modeling program for Sun computers in the 90s. He delivered the program (the whole thing) on 2 floppy discs. The techs who received it looked at him like he was missing something. He said put it in and judge me after the fact. They were blown away. In 1990 the average hard drive held about 40 MB. Imagine trying to load Firefox, or any other current software (apps if you are using Windows 8 garbage). I worked with computers in the mid seventies that didn't have hard drives. They had lots of tubes and the room they were in couldn't be above 50° F. Lots of magnetic tape and card readers were the rule. The keyboard was a telex.
Still no solution, though. SoundCloud has had over 10 million downloads on smartphones alone. It's a very popular website for music lovers and musicians. I never had any problems with it in the past, but the last few editions of Firefox have had a miserable time with it. At least in my experience. No other website puts Firefox to the test like SoundCloud. If I were a FF tech, that would be the first site I would use for trouble shooting potential problems.
yeah, man.
One other thing that bugs me is that more and more APIs, media codecs,.net,activeX and all the other crap allow for growingly weird ways to write applications. Often this results not only in security issues(as if the OS doesn't already have enough) but also in all sorts of conflicts and ressource butchering.
I mean, come on, windows alone eats almost two gigs of RAM just to keep it idle... (not to mention that ramcaching stroke of genius) But I digress...
Did the Hardware acceleration tip from cor-el help you?
I found that Pale Moon is much more responsive on many websites using lots of javascript and with many videos on them. Moonchild apparently stripped the code down a bit. It is also said to have a smaller memory footprint.