Massive slowdown on very high amount of tabs
I just ran into a problem which I'm unsure of is a problem with my computer, or an inherent problem with Firefox, albeit not one many are likely to run into. After opening apporximately 650 tabs across 12 windows (not simultaneously, it added up to it after about a week's worth of not closing tabs) Firefox ran into massive slowdowns, where it was almost impossible to navigate around tabs or windows or anything. My computer should still after that have about 2.5-3 gigabytes of RAM left in capacity after substracting the three and a half Firefox took up at that point and normal system resources, so I don't think it's my computer's fault, especially as other processes (background uTorrent and even a movie I tried to run) worked fine without noticeable slowdown. I'm just wondering if Firefox has a soft limit of the amount of tabs that can be open or if that was more likely to be the case of background scripts running on webpages slowing it down (I get the same kinds of slowdowns if Flash player runs into a loop problem from a faulty script, but none of the tabs had flash running and I was blocking ads that could have popped a flash ad). Once I shut down 4-5 of the tabs Firefox resumed working as normal, then when I opened 5 new different ones going back up to approximately 650 (+/-2-4) the slowdown resumed.
I'm a bit obsessive compulsive in keeping at arm's length stuff that I might need even if it's next week so I'm likely to run into this again if this is the case. If Firefox has no such problem known, tell me what I should look into fixing or beefing up on my computer, such as RAM.
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If I run Firefox for a week without exiting it, it sometimes becomes very sluggish, but I haven't noticed any pattern to it.
I'm not aware of a hard limit on the number of tabs open, either simultaneously or during a session. But you may be nearing some kind of memory limit within Firefox: it's a 32-bit application, so even if you have 8GB RAM, I think 3GB is near the upper limit that it can use.
Memory issues aside, I had another thought:
As you browse, Firefox continuously updates a file (sessionstore.js) with information about your currently open and recently open windows and tabs. Depending on how active you are, this can occur as often as every 15 seconds. Sometimes Firefox runs into problems maintaining this file; it can become corrupted or bloated. If your currently open tabs are critical to track, you might want to try the Bookmark All Tabs feature (right-click any tab in the window) in case Firefox ever does grind completely to a halt or the session history file becomes unusable.
(The session history update interval, and the number of closed windows/tabs remembered are adjustable if that seems relevant.)
Thank you, that was extremely helpful, especially the 32 bit thing as I think that's exactly what I was seeing. With all the tabs open (including multiple heavy high resolution image sites) I hit 3.2-3.5 gig spent by Firefox, after the computer crashed (just after I posted) and restarted then reopened all the tabs without refreshing them (brilliant function if you got 10-20 youtube windows open) I'm now at 500ish mb spent instead without all those images loaded and I see no problems at all with a similar or greater number of tabs. The fact that it could be the program that had the memory limit rather than my computer passed me over entirely. Derp.
However the sessionstore.js part was also extremely helpful, as that probably explains a few previous crashes I've had that I was never able to find the reason for.
So yes, thanks for your assitance, much appreciated!
Geändert am von Sacremas