One of the biggest performance bottlenecks on a PC is not the speed of the CPU, but the amount of memory the machine has. Firefox performance, like all applications, can be adversely effected by amount of system resources being used.

How to determine if you have a memory issue

Microsoft's "Windows Task Manager" and the "Perfomance Tab" Window

Click to learn how to pull up the Performance tab on your Windows Task Manager. Once you are at the Microsoft Website, click on "Get details on how much memory is being used" under the instructions. This will explain the performance tab information and more.

Check Your Machines Physical Memory Use.

1. Open the Windows Task Manager on your machine and select the "Performance tab" to see your machines physical memory use.
2. At the bottom of the window, there will be a percentage of the Physical Memory being used.

Do you have a lot of applications open?

Having many applications running simulataneously may cause your computer to run slowly and other applications to as well. By closing down some of the unnessary applications, this may resolve the issue.

Memory Is High After Rebooting Computer and Opening Firefox

If you are still seeing memory issues after following all the steps in this article, please see the following.

• Are you able to add more memory to the computer? Memory is cheap and will provide a huge performance boost. Firefox requires at least 512MB of RAM or more.

• If you cannot add more memory, other programs running in the background can slow your computer down. Turning off unecessary programs will reduce the memory use.

For more information on adding memory see this Microsoft Article.