This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox 3.6.3 Large Memory Use the Longer the Browser is Open (slows computer)

more options

Firefox loads with memory usage approx 90-100k Over the course of a few hours memory usage grows to 500k Memory usage grows whether I begin browsing or not (as an experiment, I opened browser without opening a URL and left the browser open overnight). Significantly slows my system. When the memory size has grown large, I am able to close Firefox. The browser closes. However, Firefox takes ~1-3 minutes before it actually shuts down. If I try to open a new browser during that time, I get a message saying that Firefox is still running.

I opened a new thread as requested after reading: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/626951 (firefox 3.6 has possible memory leak after prolonged usage and becomes unresponsive)

This happened

Every time Firefox opened

== I upgraded to Firefox 3.6

Firefox loads with memory usage approx 90-100k Over the course of a few hours memory usage grows to 500k Memory usage grows whether I begin browsing or not (as an experiment, I opened browser without opening a URL and left the browser open overnight). Significantly slows my system. When the memory size has grown large, I am able to close Firefox. The browser closes. However, Firefox takes ~1-3 minutes before it actually shuts down. If I try to open a new browser during that time, I get a message saying that Firefox is still running. I opened a new thread as requested after reading: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/626951 (firefox 3.6 has possible memory leak after prolonged usage and becomes unresponsive) == This happened == Every time Firefox opened == I upgraded to Firefox 3.6

All Replies (4)

more options

From your plugin and extension information, there are a few possible reasons for this:

more options

Same issue as poster above. When I check task manager after having the newest version up and running for a few hours the memory usage becomes completely insane. Upwards of a 1,000,000 k. This is way too much, I'm going to have to start using Opera until this gets sorted out.

more options

Update: I updated by plug-ins and disabled the "Mozilla ActiveX control" shortly after zzxc replied.

I also ran Firefox in Safe mode. Same thing happened, just takes longer.

I am currently closing and restarting Firefox 3.6 every time it grows to the 500k-600k mark.

more options

I have similar problem with Firefox 3.6.15, so far I try adding or memory to my XP machine and that does not solve the problem.


I now getting up to 474 MB memory usage!

What is going on with firefox???

Edeziri site na rtobias71