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When I close Firefox, it leaves an open instance each time in Processes. This eats up memory. I've disabled all add-ons, and it still does it.

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el
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Over the course of the day, I can have 15-20 instances running in the background and they can range from as low as 3K in memory to upwards of 500000K. This makes my computer super laggy, and I have to go in and manually shut down each one. I've disabled every single add-on and plug in, and tried uninstalling and re-installing Firefox to no avail. I'm at the point where if I can't get this fixed, I'll just have to switch to another browser because this is a huge time suck. If you have any ideas, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Over the course of the day, I can have 15-20 instances running in the background and they can range from as low as 3K in memory to upwards of 500000K. This makes my computer super laggy, and I have to go in and manually shut down each one. I've disabled every single add-on and plug in, and tried uninstalling and re-installing Firefox to no avail. I'm at the point where if I can't get this fixed, I'll just have to switch to another browser because this is a huge time suck. If you have any ideas, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

All Replies (2)

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox.exe_always_open


Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac Options)
key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

Use "Firefox > Exit" (Windows: Firefox/File > Exit; Mac: Firefox > Quit Firefox; Linux: Firefox/File > Quit) to close Firefox if you are currently doing that by clicking the close X on the Firefox title bar.

If you use "Clear history when Firefox closes" then try to disable this feature.

  • Tools > Options > Privacy > Firefox will: "Use custom settings for history": [] "Clear history when Firefox closes"