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firfox uses 20% of my ram

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  • Last reply by timelesspa

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since removing 8gb of my ram after some other issues lve noticed firefox has started using allot of ram, in fact lve seen it as high at 1gb and l dont believe it used that much before.

suffice to say l was wondering if there was any tips anyone could give me to optimize the browser because l never used to use 20% of my ram on just firefox, l did install firefox while l had 16GB ram however l had to take 8 of it out due to bsod messages are there any things l could do to keep usage low? lve seen some readme's out there like http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-steps-reduce-firefox-4-memory-leak/

but some lm not sure about doing.

since removing 8gb of my ram after some other issues lve noticed firefox has started using allot of ram, in fact lve seen it as high at 1gb and l dont believe it used that much before. suffice to say l was wondering if there was any tips anyone could give me to optimize the browser because l never used to use 20% of my ram on just firefox, l did install firefox while l had 16GB ram however l had to take 8 of it out due to bsod messages are there any things l could do to keep usage low? lve seen some readme's out there like http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-steps-reduce-firefox-4-memory-leak/ but some lm not sure about doing.

All Replies (6)

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Overall, 1GB of RAM usage really isn't "that much" especially since you still have 8 GB installed. I see that much with only 2GB of RAM.

You create a new Profile to "test" and see if Firefox uses less RAM than it does now. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

And if that doesn't make an improvement, try reinstalling Firefox and make sure the new installation is using that "test" Profile.

Firefox uses RAM based upon how much is "on-board", but I don't know if the "decision" is saved anywhere. I wonder is Firefox is still expecting that 16GB of RAM is available yet??

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thats what l was wondering, based upon browser.cache.disk.capacity as noted in the link l shared.

ld have contemplated editing it but ld rather know what lm doing than stabbing in the dark.

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  1. The basic premise of that article is flawed. "I have been using Firefox for many years and have carried over my profile from each version and computer to the next. Over the years, I have accumulated hundreds of bookmarks, dozens of extensions (most disabled), and several plugins." The "Profile" doesn't "age gracefully", a fresh / new Profile after every major version change in Firefox is almost necessary to lessen issues. Firefox 4 was a huge version change, not just a "major" one. But that was then ....
  2. Using an article that is over 3 years is never a good idea. Firefox has undergone many changes between Firefox 4.0 and the current Firefox 32 version.
  3. Everything in that article from the Prologue to the Epilogue is riddled with errors and misconceptions.

IMO, a fresh installation AND a new Profile is needed as a new "baseline".

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creating a new profile hasnt really made any difference, l had done that pretty recently due to other issues, basically l thought there was a problem with one of my addons due to it not working on the new update.

so l had to downgrade to 31.0.

save images and gmail manager stopped working and they are both addons l use allot, ld upgrade to the latest version if the following addons worked on the latest version.

(every recent update seems to break this addon, its weird.. the author updates in then firefox updates and it breaks again) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-images/?src=ss

this one is especially important as l have more than one account to check and lve not found a better addon that works the same. https://github.com/nedwidek/firefox-gmail-manager-ng

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Sorry, I'm not gonna to contribute anything more in this thread as you are tossing too many variables that have nothing to with the posted topic [IMO] or are tangential at best.

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you asked about addons (l only use those two), you also suggested changing profile (l did that recently).

as for the downgrade, it was a clean install, my system was recently rebuilt you could say l downgraded to a previous version after reinstall (installing clean version after reinstall).

was just hoping someone had some ideas l could try to lower the memory usage, l just provided the variables asked for with some side notes.