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Firefox became really slow lately and taking over CPU and RAM!! Mac Lion OS X 10.8.2 Firefox 16.0.1

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so I noticed lately (the past ~5 weeks) that Firefox runs REALLY REALLY slow. I usually have 3 windows open all the time (one with about 7-8 tabs and the other two with 5-6 tabs, total of 20, maybe 25 tabs at some point but ends up going back to about 20 tabs at the end of the day)

it was fine for the past 2 years never had a problem. usually it takes about a week (or longer sometimes) before I need to restart my laptop to clear up some memory. but now I cant do it at all. as soon as I open firefox I will notice my laptop gets slower and slower and the fans comes on and laptop gets hot fast. CPU usage for firefox is high same with Ram.

here is what I did to try and solve the problem. I first updates all the add ons, didnt do anything. cleared the cash,,, nothing. disabled the add-ons. it helped but still wasn't fast enough. so I reset firefox and had all the add ons removed. still same thing. I deletet firefox and reinstalled it... still same problem. to confirm that my laptop is good enough to run those many tabs I downloaded google chrome to test it and I had three windows with a total of like 34 tabs (yes 34) and it was running fine. actually I think from now on I will be using chrome and not even go back to firefox due to how fast it was!! and its using 30% less of the memory too!!


I have been using Firefox since 08 and it was the best browser I have ever used and never looked at any other one. but I downloaded chrome to check and see if my laptop was the problem but now I know its the browser. I noticed that this problem only started when this update came on few weeks ago (not sure which one because in the past 5-6 weeks I kept getting those updates. I think I did at least 3 updates if not even more) but I am sure it was one of the 15.X updates. now I am running the latest update which seems like its even worse.

any help would be appreciate it. I am still trying to make this browser work but if this problem keeps going on then I guess I have no choice but to move on to a different one. I miss some of the features that firefox have over chrome.

I have a mid 2010 macbook pro. OS X 10.8.2, 320GB (with has about 72GB of free space), 8GB ram, 2.66GHz intel core 2 duo, running latest updates on everything and running Lion with the latest update too.

tried to search but kept geting those old thread and its locked now so cant post in it.

Thanks

so I noticed lately (the past ~5 weeks) that Firefox runs REALLY REALLY slow. I usually have 3 windows open all the time (one with about 7-8 tabs and the other two with 5-6 tabs, total of 20, maybe 25 tabs at some point but ends up going back to about 20 tabs at the end of the day) it was fine for the past 2 years never had a problem. usually it takes about a week (or longer sometimes) before I need to restart my laptop to clear up some memory. but now I cant do it at all. as soon as I open firefox I will notice my laptop gets slower and slower and the fans comes on and laptop gets hot fast. CPU usage for firefox is high same with Ram. here is what I did to try and solve the problem. I first updates all the add ons, didnt do anything. cleared the cash,,, nothing. disabled the add-ons. it helped but still wasn't fast enough. so I reset firefox and had all the add ons removed. still same thing. I deletet firefox and reinstalled it... still same problem. to confirm that my laptop is good enough to run those many tabs I downloaded google chrome to test it and I had three windows with a total of like 34 tabs (yes 34) and it was running fine. actually I think from now on I will be using chrome and not even go back to firefox due to how fast it was!! and its using 30% less of the memory too!! I have been using Firefox since 08 and it was the best browser I have ever used and never looked at any other one. but I downloaded chrome to check and see if my laptop was the problem but now I know its the browser. I noticed that this problem only started when this update came on few weeks ago (not sure which one because in the past 5-6 weeks I kept getting those updates. I think I did at least 3 updates if not even more) but I am sure it was one of the 15.X updates. now I am running the latest update which seems like its even worse. any help would be appreciate it. I am still trying to make this browser work but if this problem keeps going on then I guess I have no choice but to move on to a different one. I miss some of the features that firefox have over chrome. I have a mid 2010 macbook pro. OS X 10.8.2, 320GB (with has about 72GB of free space), 8GB ram, 2.66GHz intel core 2 duo, running latest updates on everything and running Lion with the latest update too. tried to search but kept geting those old thread and its locked now so cant post in it. Thanks

Modified by walhan_qtr

All Replies (3)

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Sorry about search not working better. Maybe something here is helpful?

If not, look over this thread in the contributors forum, in case it helps:

Modified by AliceWyman

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For me this problem manifested in Firefox 17 but I have same specs as OP. The second I open Firefox I basically have to reboot.

I had Activity Monitor open and it seemed related (though I had no tabs open) to a specific Plugin that was eating up 100% of CPU, the Quicktime Player plugin.

I'm stuck in Chrome for work until I can devote enough time to downgrade to 15 or 16 :(

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I encountered the same type of problem. Firefox running terribly slowly and slowing down my entire machine (Core i5 with 256GB SSD). Searching the forums, I found a couple of things about troubleshooting performance issues, one of which was to use hardware acceleration, that is on by default. It was turned on on my PC, so I tried deactivating it, and it worked! So doing the exact opposite as Mozilla support said solved the problem. It is really a pain now to work with Firefox. I'm using it because I have no choice, but I'd recommend IE and Chrome over Firefox... Whatever, the market will decide once Firefox has become to crappy...