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Firefox crashes because low free left RAM!

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I have many tabs like 200-300. Firefox crashed today. I also have 4GB page file on top of that. Strange! After I restarted Firefox it was using only 6.8GB RAM. Perhaps memory leak. BTW if I have browser.cache.disk.enable set to false. Is page file still used?

Thanks for help.

I have many tabs like 200-300. Firefox crashed today. I also have 4GB page file on top of that. Strange! After I restarted Firefox it was using only 6.8GB RAM. Perhaps memory leak. BTW if I have browser.cache.disk.enable set to false. Is page file still used? Thanks for help.

All Replies (20)

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To add: I have 16GB RAM...

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https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-many-cpu-resources-how-fix

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-hangs-or-not-responding

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-takes-long-time-start-up

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/quick-fixes-if-your-firefox-slows-down


MemTest LAST UPDATED : 12/04/2020 Could you please run a tool from http://memtest.org/ in order to check the integrity of your RAM?

You will need a thumb or disk drive to install it on.


Do you let Windows handle the page file or did you set a fixed size ? Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings

If you use a fixed size for the page file then try the former and let Windows handle the page file. How to determine the appropriate page file size for 64-bit versions of Windows {web link}

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Clear the Cache and remove the Cookies for websites that cause problems via the "3-bar" Firefox menu button (Options/Preferences).

"Remove the Cookies" for websites that cause problems:

  • Options/Preferences -> Privacy & Security
    Cookies and Site Data: "Manage Data"

"Clear the Cache":

  • Options/Preferences -> Privacy & Security
    Cookies and Site Data -> Clear Data -> Cached Web Content: Clear

Do you let Windows handle the Page file automatically or have you set a fixed size for the Windows Page File ?

  • Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings

If you use a fixed size for the page file then try the automatic setting and let Windows handle the page file automatically.

You can check the Firefox Task Manager (about:performance) and about:memory pages.

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Wow that's a lot of links. Ok will check later, but usually this will solve nothing...

I don't think it is RAM. I have QVL certified, Samsung B-Die G.Skill Trindet Z 3200mhz cl16 2x8GB. I have no reason to suspect anything is wrong with RAM. But I can try memtest later, if this will happen again.

My min/max page file = 4GB which is fine for 16GB RAM. I know system managed is best. But even when I play BF1 with 1MB free RAM left: it is used max from 6%. It is barely touched! I can check next time, when I Am low on RAM, what is page file usage.

If it will happen again, I let you know,

Modified by empleat

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LOL it is happening again, Firefox crashes when it runs out of RAM, even page file is on!!! I have approximately same amount of tabs in Chrome and it takes only 3GB of ram LOL!!! Wait now I think about it, I disabled disk cache. I will try with enabled disk cache.

Modified by empleat

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Ok I enabled disk cache and it crashed again... No idea how much free RAM were left, but I didn't have opened many programs. As I said: I tried recently memtest and don't have memory leak in other programs, nor do I think this is a memory leak! I had same experience in past with Firefox, it takes a lot of RAM! Don't have BSOD, or any other weird problems currently. Clean system, no errors both (sfc /dism), no errors in event viewer, no disk errors. Also memory compression is off FYI.

Currently I don't feel like moving PC into other room, because I can't sleep when it is on. But I can try it later. Still I Am like 99%, it is not RAM, as I don't have RAM problems in other programs!

WHAT I NEED is to figure out, why is Firefox crashing with low RAM. As Chrome didn't crash and used page file. I have page file, so there should be no reason for Firefox to crash when it runs out of RAM!!! And I allowed disk cache again. I didn't change almost anything in about config: - disabled mediapeerconnection - turned on gfx renderer + software (but crashes happened before)

And that's it.

Modified by empleat

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hello empleat,

my initial response is: 300 tabs !!!!

I dont know? I dont get it as to why anyone would need to open soooo many tabs. I can also see thousands of cookies and trackers and redirects being installed by those webpages

And it could very well be that one of the webpages trying to be opened is corrupted or sucking the resources out of your FF , then crashing it.

My suggestion is:

Open 1 FF window and then load 10 tabs in it. Then do this 19 times more as you wait and see which one(s) are breaking the camels back.

Then let us know what you see and get.

btw: Also do this test via Windows safe-mode w/networking.

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·´¯`·...¸>-)))º> ~dbben said

hello empleat, my initial response is: 300 tabs !!!! I dont know? I dont get it as to why anyone would need to open soooo many tabs. I can also see thousands of cookies and trackers and redirects being installed by those webpages And it could very well be that one of the webpages trying to be opened is corrupted or sucking the resources out of your FF , then crashing it. My suggestion is: Open 1 FF window and then load 10 tabs in it. Then do this 19 times more as you wait and see which one(s) are breaking the camels back. Then let us know what you see and get. btw: Also do this test via Windows safe-mode w/networking.

You reaction to 300 tabs - are you living in 1999 :D ? Probably not everyone has 300, but like 100... 300 is when I Am relaxing :D I read philosophy/science/politics/c++ I used to have even 1000+ tabs in Chrome :D :D :D We are not in 1999 anymore so...

I use Ublock and privacy badger, on top of Firefox blocking and cookies are set to: exclude from unvisited websites. I would clean them, but I don't want to lose login on too many sites (I don't remember their names!) to exclude them easily!

[quote] Open 1 FF window and then load 10 tabs in it. Then do this 19 times more as you wait and see which one(s) are breaking the camels back. /quote That must be April joke right?

Again it would be fine, if Firefox used page file. Any idea how do I make Firefox use page file???

What does mean: breaking camels back?

Modified by empleat

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Oh i see. I use to read philosophy a few decades ago.

In any case, my suggestion for opening a set number of pages at a time, is to examine the level of resources that are consumed on your machine.

My rationale was/is that if by the time you open one set of tabs we would know how much memory is consumed. And if you opened another set of pages we would again know how much additional memory was consumed.

Eventually we would then know how many tabs/pages could successfully be opened before FF crashed on you and how much memory was consumed at the time.

On a side note, webpages these days are more complex and utilize more resources because of all the cookies, trackers tracking your browsing, trackers tracking each other, high dpi images, etc...

Incidentally, both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge benefit by the information they gather from its users. On the other hand, the newer FireFox is designed to block intrusions of your privacy.

However, it may very well be that FireFox is hard coded with how many pages it will open. Or it could be that one of the pages you download is faulty and crashing the browser. And it could very well be that an antiviral or antimalware may view all the pages being opened as a external threat for your system. We just dont know because we have no additional info.

As a possible solution, you could downgrade your FireFox to an earlier version that worked well for you. The earlier versions would be simplistic when compared to the current version of FF.

There is also the possiblity of manually increasing the current windows page file too. Do you know what size it is at this time?

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·´¯`·...¸>-)))º> ~dbben said

Oh i see. I use to read philosophy a few decades ago. In any case, my suggestion for opening a set number of pages at a time, is to examine the level of resources that are consumed on your machine.............

I appreciate you are trying to help, but I Am currently doing something difficult and doing this by groups like 10, or 19, would take forever! You can't honestly expecting me to do that! It would take forever!

I fired up perfmon. to measure free RAM, paging file usage etc. of firefox.

I used Firefox tracking protection, Ublock+Privacy badger. Cookies are set to: from unvisited websites.

- Also I lowered browser.cache.memory.capacity to 24576 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity

- enabled HW accel. - 4 threads - I tried process lasso memory trimming, but it seem to do nothing

Now I am on 12/16GB.

Yeah true: to be fair to Firefox they do things to improve privacy. I donate to firefox monthly to support freedom. Only gripe is features! There should be no need to install addons, they are all risky. You have essentially no way of telling ultimately! Maybe if it has like source code out, and what if someone hacks it, when it is popular like with 10M users and what not. I hate addons!

I usually don't even get to malware pages, because Bitdefender and I use HTTPS everywhere. It crashes always when there is no RAM left.

Yeah I had question about this! Does Firefox use page file by default, or can I set how much? I googled for it and didn't find anything relevant! It should like any other program would do right? I had page file size 4GB min/max. I tried to set it to system managed, so it is allocated dynamically, but it didn't help :( I had another crash. While browser.cache.disk.enable is set to "true".

Could I use about:memory? It shows memory allocated by tabs. I don't want to share my tabs tho. So if you could tell me what I Am looking for exactly. How much MB for a tab is a problem likely?

Thanks.

Modified by empleat

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·´¯`·...¸>-)))º> ~dbben said

Oh i see. I use to read philosophy a few decades ago. In any case, my suggestion for opening a set number of pages at a time, is to examine the level of resources that are consumed on your machine.............

I appreciate you are trying to help, but I Am currently doing something difficult and doing this by groups like 10, or 19, would take forever! You can't honestly expect me to do all of that! It would take forever!

I fired up perfmon. to measure free RAM, paging file usage etc. of Firefox. Now I am on 12/16GB RAM, page file 800, will see when it crashes how much of page file was used!

I used Firefox tracking protection, Ublock+Privacy badger. Cookies are set to: from unvisited websites.

- Also I lowered browser.cache.memory.capacity to 24576 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity - enabled HW accel. - 4 threads - I tried process lasso memory trimming, but it seem to do nothing

Yeah true: to be fair to Firefox they do things to improve privacy. I donate to firefox monthly to support freedom. My only gripe is features! There should be no need to install addons, they are all risky! You have essentially no way of telling ultimately! There are no verified addons for bookmark managers e.g. Maybe if it has like source code out, but what if someone hacks it, when it is popular like with 10M users and what not. I hate addons!

I usually don't even get to malware pages, because Bitdefender and I use HTTPS everywhere. It crashes always when there is no RAM left.

Yeah I had question about this! Does Firefox use page file by default, or can I set how much? I googled for it and didn't find anything relevant! It should like any other program would do right? I had page file size 4GB min/max. I tried to set it to system managed, so it is allocated dynamically, but it didn't help :( I had another crash. While browser.cache.disk.enable is set to "true".

Could I use about:memory? It shows memory allocated by tabs. I don't want to share my tabs tho. So if you could tell me what I Am looking for exactly. How much MB for a tab is a problem likely?

Thanks.

Modified by empleat

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·´¯`·...¸>-)))º> ~dbben said

   Oh i see.  I use to read philosophy a few decades ago.
   In any case, my suggestion for opening a set number of pages at a time, is to examine the level of resources that are consumed on your machine.............  

I appreciate you are trying to help, but I Am currently doing something difficult and doing this by groups like 10, or 19, would take forever! You can't honestly expect me to do all of that! It would take forever!

I fired up perfmon. to measure free RAM, paging file usage etc. of Firefox. Now I am on 12/16GB RAM, page file 800, will see when it crashes how much of page file was used! EDIT: I have currently page file size 5,4GB and perfmon. shows for Firefox instances even 1-2GB page file sizes. So it was probably page file, I should got 32GB+ RAM :D Anyway, I will see if it crashes, it should now grow unlimited!

I used Firefox tracking protection, Ublock+Privacy badger. Cookies are set to: from unvisited websites.

- Also I lowered browser.cache.memory.capacity to 24576 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity - enabled HW accel. - 4 threads - I tried process lasso memory trimming, but it seem to do nothing

Yeah true: to be fair to Firefox they do things to improve privacy. I donate to firefox monthly to support freedom. My only gripe is features! There should be no need to install addons, they are all risky! You have essentially no way of telling ultimately! There are no verified addons for bookmark managers e.g. Maybe if it has like source code out, but what if someone hacks it, when it is popular like with 10M users and what not. I hate addons!

I usually don't even get to malware pages, because Bitdefender and I use HTTPS everywhere. It crashes always when there is no RAM left.

Yeah I had question about this! Does Firefox use page file by default, or can I set how much? I googled for it and didn't find anything relevant! It should like any other program would do right? I had page file size 4GB min/max. I tried to set it to system managed, so it is allocated dynamically, but it didn't help :( I had another crash. While browser.cache.disk.enable is set to "true".

Could I use about:memory? It shows memory allocated by tabs. I don't want to share my tabs tho. So if you could tell me what I Am looking for exactly. How much MB for a tab is a problem likely?

Thanks.

PS: for some reason edit cause post to disappear and sometimes it won't post! Luckily I went back and retrieved post!

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BitDefender ?!!

I'm sorry to say that this app has been problematic for a number of FF users. After they disable it, they then have acheived happy results with FF.

My suggestion at this time is to temporarily turn it off/disable it. Then see how your system works out.

In the mean time, I am going to re-read your memory feedback. I think i found a solution to increase performance. But let me double check.

In the interim, I know disabling BitDefender will help you. But dont know by how much. Let me know please.

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well, i dont know if my adjustments to the cache made any difference.

I opened like 25 home depot webpages and the mem usage went from 430 megs to 1700 megs.

i can only image how much memory would be used if i multiplied 25 homedepot pages by 10.

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Woah that may be it! I browse a long time and now only 8GB, by this time it would be at least 12GB I would expect! I will contact BD, thanks for you help!

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you're welcome empleat.  :-)

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I reinstalled BD and it seems it fixed it. Now after hours only 10GB~ Thanks for help!

Modified by empleat

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Thats interesting. Is it the same version now as it was prior to its uninstall?

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