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The new plugin container is eating up huge memory and cpu. You need to fix!!!!!

  • 4 replies
  • 16 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by josegime

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Not sure when you guys created the plugin container but it is a disaster. It is eating up memory and cpu. And, as I look at your help area, it appears that this is happening frequently. You need to fix! I'm not interested in debugging your program. I am just reporting a problem that if you don't fix many people will not use your browser (me included). All my add-ons are "ask-to-activate" except the three firefox installs. I recommend going to the old way and not release programs until they are working. What I novel approach.

Not sure when you guys created the plugin container but it is a disaster. It is eating up memory and cpu. And, as I look at your help area, it appears that this is happening frequently. You need to fix! I'm not interested in debugging your program. I am just reporting a problem that if you don't fix many people will not use your browser (me included). All my add-ons are "ask-to-activate" except the three firefox installs. I recommend going to the old way and not release programs until they are working. What I novel approach.

All Replies (4)

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Hi Dylantom, this is confusing, but: it might not have anything to do with plugins.

One of the headline changes in Firefox 48 is that some users have a new feature enabled, which separates the browser interface process from the page content process. The performance impact of this can vary a lot between systems, so could you check whether you have this feature turned on? Either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, check the row for "Multiprocess Windows" and see whether the number on the left side of the fraction is greater than zero. If so, you are using e10s, which puts the page content into plugin-container.exe (even if there are no plugins).

Aside from the heavy memory use, are you finding that Firefox is not performing well? In that case, you could try this:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste autos and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 preference to switch the value from true to false

Note: the exact name of the preference may vary, but it will start with browser.tabs.remote.autostart

At your next Firefox startup, it should run in the traditional way.

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Dylantom said

Not sure when you guys created the plugin container but it is a disaster. It is eating up memory and cpu. I recommend going to the old way and not release programs until they are working. What I novel approach.

The plugin container has existed since Firefox 3.6.4 Release back on June 22nd, 2010. It is supposed to keep Firefox from crashing when a Plugin crashes.

The old way of Releases before 5.0 took forever and was less controlled at what got checked in. Plus due to the length of time it took to have a new major release there were times Mozilla had to support two if not three branches of Releases.

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Thank you James! This worked.

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For those of you that want to disable it, the post by jscher2000 worked for me