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Which process should I end to kill Firefox 57.0?

azinyk
azinyk
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Occasionally, any piece of complex software will stop responding, and need to be forcibly shut down. I had such an event today when the right-click (context) menus and title-bar menus wouldn't appear. However, since upgrading to FF 57, I now see about 6 Firefox tasks and 6 firefox.exe processes in the Task Manager (Windows 10).

I like the feature of being able to restart Firefox (after killing it) and have my previous session restored, but the processes aren't really distinguishable in Task Manager, so I don't know which one to end/kill. I had to kill a few of them today before I stumbled upon the "main" process and Firefox disappeared. Can you help me to identify the main process for next time?

Occasionally, any piece of complex software will stop responding, and need to be forcibly shut down. I had such an event today when the right-click (context) menus and title-bar menus wouldn't appear. However, since upgrading to FF 57, I now see about 6 Firefox tasks and 6 firefox.exe processes in the Task Manager (Windows 10). I like the feature of being able to restart Firefox (after killing it) and have my previous session restored, but the processes aren't really distinguishable in Task Manager, so I don't know which one to end/kill. I had to kill a few of them today before I stumbled upon the "main" process and Firefox disappeared. Can you help me to identify the main process for next time?

Chosen solution

I found that by sorting the tasks in task manager by name (instead of by memory or CPU usage, for instance), the task manager groups them into Apps and Background Processes. Then it's easy to see which one is the root task.

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All Replies (3)

FredMcD
FredMcD
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How to crash Firefox (All Systems); Instructions here; https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/How_to_report_a_hung_Firefox

This link has a program that can crash Firefox.

How long is Firefox running before there is a problem?

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link} by holding down the <Shift> (Mac=Options) key, and then starting Firefox.

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Firefox+is+already+running+but+is+not+responding

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding

azinyk
azinyk Question owner
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Chosen Solution

I found that by sorting the tasks in task manager by name (instead of by memory or CPU usage, for instance), the task manager groups them into Apps and Background Processes. Then it's easy to see which one is the root task.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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That's clever.

If you are using the Details tab and you add the Command Line column, that also will help you distinguish the content processes from the main process.