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Mozilla is eating my RAM, continued

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  • Last reply by Mark Foley

Mark Foley
Mark Foley
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This is a continuation of issue https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223605?fpa=1, which is closed. That thread is fairly recent (September 2018, I believe), and I am having this same problem with Firefox on Windows 7 consuming all memory in an 8GB machine. One of the solutions proposed there was "about:memory 'Minimize memory usage'". I've done that and received the response "Memory minimization completed (2018-12-28T22:10:01.798Z)". My (initial) question is this: does this function PERMANENTLY minimize memory usage, or just for that session, or even just for that instance and it will then continue to consume memory after clicking the 'Minimize memory usage' button?

If it's only instantaneous or for the session, this does not solve the problem. I concur with one of the posters in the referenced thread that I have other programs to run and after Firefox consumes all memory it can take several minutes simply to open a Task Manager windows, let alone open a spreadsheet; and can take 5-10 minutes to log off.

This seems like a recent phenomenon with the 64.0 update.

This is a continuation of issue https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1223605?fpa=1, which is closed. That thread is fairly recent (September 2018, I believe), and I am having this same problem with Firefox on Windows 7 consuming all memory in an 8GB machine. One of the solutions proposed there was "about:memory 'Minimize memory usage'". I've done that and received the response "Memory minimization completed (2018-12-28T22:10:01.798Z)". My (initial) question is this: does this function PERMANENTLY minimize memory usage, or just for that session, or even just for that instance and it will then continue to consume memory after clicking the 'Minimize memory usage' button? If it's only instantaneous or for the session, this does not solve the problem. I concur with one of the posters in the referenced thread that I have other programs to run and after Firefox consumes all memory it can take several minutes simply to open a Task Manager windows, let alone open a spreadsheet; and can take 5-10 minutes to log off. This seems like a recent phenomenon with the 64.0 update.

All Replies (2)

WestEnd
WestEnd
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How was your version updated or upgraded? I've seen upgrade or updates that corrupted firefox and the fix was to uninstall all firefox and deleting mozilla folder and reinstall it again to fix the problem. And if you have bookmarks backup those as well to restore it back. I have many tabs or app open and have no issue closing 64.

Mark Foley
Mark Foley Question owner
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WestEnd said

How was your version updated or upgraded?

It was upgraded via the normal automatic route where firefox informs the user that it is updating and then advises you to restart firefox.

I've seen upgrade or updates that corrupted firefox and the fix was to uninstall all firefox and deleting mozilla folder and reinstall it again to fix the problem. And if you have bookmarks backup those as well to restore it back. I have many tabs or app open and have no issue closing 64.

Yes, I was about to do exactly this when I came across the about:memory idea. So, to follow up on that, is the about:memory an immediate, session only releasing of memory, or is this a permanent setting of some kind? If temporary, I'll go ahead and re-install firefox.