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Firefox uses too much RAM

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I currently have 5 tabs open and am using 1.7gb of RAM and 74% of Physical memory according to Task Manager. How do I go about finding what plug-ins and add-ons I have? What's the difference between the two?

I currently have 5 tabs open and am using 1.7gb of RAM and 74% of Physical memory according to Task Manager. How do I go about finding what plug-ins and add-ons I have? What's the difference between the two?

All Replies (7)

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Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode, which disables most add-ons.

(If you're not using it, switch to the Default theme.)

  • Open the Help menu and click on the Restart with Add-ons Disabled... menu item while Firefox is running.

Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode"

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article for that.

To exit the Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

Please report back soon.

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hello, thanks for posting with your troubleshooting information. plugins (like flash or java) are usually installed on a system level whereas extensions are specific to the browser.

i've noticed that you have the skype click-to-call extension installed, another user recently reported that the memory leaks stopped when he disabled it, so you could try the same under firefox > addons > extensions: Disable or remove Add-ons

enter about:config into the firefox address bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for all custom (=shown in bold) preferences starting with network.http. - right-click and reset those entries to their default value, since they might be detrimental to performance.

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In safe mode my RAM dropped to 218mb of RAM and physical memory to 34%. Next I will try to troubleshoot extensions as you suggest. Thanks.

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I disabled the Skype extension and removed a couple of others that I didn't recognize. I'm back in normal mode and I'm only using 413mb and 43% of physical memory. I'll see if that stays that way over the next couple of hours.

Thanks

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Also if it persists, reset firefox, more info is in the article linked below.

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I may have to try the reset. After a couple of hours the physical memory increased to 78%; however the RAM usage is still lower at 550gb.

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From time to time, users have identified particular sites that somehow bypass Firefox's normal "garbage collection" feature and accumulate a lot of data in memory. If you notice this problem with a particular site, could you post the URL so others can try to replicate the problem?