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I am getting a memory leak that sometimes leads to an unresponsive Firefox, but does not crash per se.

robisbob
robisbob
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Hello, For the last couple of months, I am having issues with one of my tabs or the program itself causing a memory leak. I was hoping that subsequent releases would fix the problem, but when I downloaded V.11 it did not help.

I use tab mix plus and at any time, usually have about 25 tabs open. Everything functioned okay for 8 or so months up until recently. 

I am wondering if there is a way to try to track down what is causing the leak. If it is one of my open pages, i will get rid of it. I tried opening one page at a time from scratch, but could not find the issue. .

I always have flash block enabled to cut down on the website junk. using OSX firefox v11.

Hello, For the last couple of months, I am having issues with one of my tabs or the program itself causing a memory leak. I was hoping that subsequent releases would fix the problem, but when I downloaded V.11 it did not help. I use tab mix plus and at any time, usually have about 25 tabs open. Everything functioned okay for 8 or so months up until recently. I am wondering if there is a way to try to track down what is causing the leak. If it is one of my open pages, i will get rid of it. I tried opening one page at a time from scratch, but could not find the issue. . I always have flash block enabled to cut down on the website junk. using OSX firefox v11.

Modified by NoahSUMO

All Replies (3)

Matt_G
Matt_G
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Hi robisbob,

Have you looked at our performance troubleshooting section? There is a lot of good information in there that should help.

Hopefully this helps!

robisbob
robisbob Question owner
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I have it is extensive. Some of the features i have already implemented like, flashback and ad block. Just as a side note which may explain the behavior. When i left my computer on for a few hours (overnight), and came back, the memory was at 3.2GB. when i start browsing a couple of tabs, is as though something in firerox wakes up, and it went straight down to 1.4 gb, but it odes not remailn there. I can see it incrementally increases since i began writing this posing. Also strange, is that the number is not stable itself, it will jump say to 1.8 gb and down to 1.2 in only a period of about 15 seconds. The number itself is not stable even if it is low. (i think 1.5gb is fine for the amount of tabs, but the inpredcitibility is making every other program in the OP/S work in virtual memory.

I feel like something is funny, and i am not sure what to do at this point. -rib

Modified by robisbob

user207381712644192721164717959413647293280
user207381712644192721164717959413647293280
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Now, I'm not going to say it's an Add-On problem because from the research I've been doing on this problem for the last half hour shows that everyone has DIFFERENT add-ons, but everyone's having the SAME problem....

So I went through my add-ons and disabled them one by one, and the single add-on that has been giving me grief is the latest WOT add-on. So, I have Firefox 11 (so does my wife) and we both have the WOT add-on. But that's where the similarity ends... I have Windows 7 x64, she has Windows XP x86.... but she doesn't have the memory leak problem.

What I see is a sawtooth pattern over time. Memory goes up a little over 30+ seconds, then drops down. But over half an hour, the peaks of the sawtooth are larger, and it doesn't drop back down to the same level again - always a little more than before. And before you know it, FF is peaking at 1.5+GB, dropping down to 1.2GB... and FF is running very, very slowly.... excessive disk accesses (paging probably, though I apparently I still have 1.5 to 2.0 GB of free RAM). Killing FF frees it all up, and if I open FF again, it's back to using 250MB of RAM.

So, it's not the add-ons per se, but how they're interacting with FF (or the other way round).... most likely, it's this plug-in container they created to stop add-ons from taking FF with them when they crashed. Seems to have created more problems than it has solved..... would be great if you could choose not to use it....