What exactly are you doing with firefox when it uses up such resources?

• see Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix

Have you tried the refine search option, that provides advanced filtering of search items and selecting categories.

To be quite blunt, I do not have to be doing anything for FF to be sucking up the CPU cycles. It can as simple a task as refreshing a page or loading up a new one not very intensive on the face of it. It will take on the average of 4 to 5 min for FF to settle down after initial access to the program after a cold boot. If I am starting up from "stand by" mode where the program was running it will take a min or two for FF to calm down.

The two programs that I speak of are: firefox.exe & plugin-container.exe

W/r/t searching FAQ I can not even get a response after I have entered a query into the search box and hitting the enter key. There is no response, nothing. It is not about narrowing down the search, there just is no response, nothing, am I repeating myself.

lostinthecloud

I suspect your experience with Firefox is not typical, and one possibility to think about is malware.

Firefox searches: that should work on this site, and as I mentioned earlier you should also have the advanced search options. Again rather than blaming firefox or the site maybe it is something odd about your machine or your setup.

Maybe it is hanging and not closing down properly, if the plugin-container.exe is running it normally indicates something such as a video is running.

• see firefox hangs

Whilst I am not able to offer a solution you may be interested in the article Firefox takes a long time to start up If after reading that you continue to have problems you may also be interested in this post as it appears someone may be looking for examples of problems with Firefox 4.

I suspect your experience with Firefox is not typical, and one possibility to think the about is malware.

w/r/t the above response my answer is that the machine has been checked by at least three different security software packages and there is nothing to report after each of the scans. If I am looking at the task mgr. & it is telling me that firefox.exe & plugin-container.exe are the problem w/r/t eating up CPU time than I do not think that you can say that malware is the problem.

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Firefox searches: that should work on this site, and as I mentioned earlier you should also have the advanced search options. Again rather than blaming firefox or the site maybe it is something odd about your machine or your setup.

Both searches did not work (As in respond), else I would not bothered to mention it in the post. And I was not blaming the site it was a comment/issue that I thought needed to be addressed.

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Maybe it is hanging and not closing down properly, if the plugin-container.exe is running it normally indicates something such as a video is running.

How is that when I am just booting up the machine and loading/starting up FF for the first time fresh, not a restart of an old session. Yes, I know that if you have a previous session with a video running that it will start up if you restart an old session.

Many Thanks LostInTheCloud

Sorry I have no solution for your problems, I will have to leave it for someone else to try to answer, other than one comment, that may be worth following up:

There is a bug63427*that causes firefox to open multiple copies of plugincontainer for plugins, even if they are disabled ! when data/cookies are cleared. If that is causing your problem possibly the only solutions until the bug is fixed may be either

1. remove the plugins (or disable at OS level, or use another OS account)
2. revert to an earlier version of Firefox

(It is considered spam to post unnecessarily https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html in bugzilla just to confirm you have a problem, but you could vote to have it actioned and add your name to the emails cc list if you wish to be kept informed of progress)

P.S
today 18th of May there may be a temporary problem with searching the support site.

Some idea of your set-up would be helpful.

Look up Problematic Extensions; list your third party toolbars; and are your plug-ins(such as Flash) up to date? All of these have caused major, but easily fixed, problems for other people.

Remember Firefox isn't the only thing that has been updated and new conflicts can develop. The solution could be a lot simpler than a Firefox bug.

I am running Win XP Prof on a sony vaio w/P4 2.xGHz w/2Gb RAM

FF v4.0 (not sure if this is the latest version.) FYI Once I did have 5 copies of the plug-in-container running simultaneously, but that only happened once and has not occurred since. (that was about 60 days ago)

Plug-ins ==> have disabled all, none running

Add-ons that I am running currently w/ver.

Adblock Plus 1.3.6 - Add-on Compatibility reporter 0.8.3 - Download Manager tweak 0.9.5 - Fire.fm 1.4.14 - FireFTP 1.99.3 - ImTranslator 4.01 - Java Console 6.0.18 - Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 0.0.0 - WOT 20110323 -

Menu Bar - Navigation toolbar - Bookmark Toolbar - fire.fm - Add-on Bar -

Many Thanks Lostinthecloud

P.S. W/r/t memory leakage there is too much of it on the P4 machine. FYI another sony machine that I have which has P3 w/1Gb RAM running 3.6x does not have any of the problem that P4 machine has w/r/t FF.

P.P.S. Like I wrote in the original post I did not get a response to search request that I was submitting. So how would I know where to vote?

What is the follow all about.

(It is considered spam to post unnecessarily https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html in bugzilla just to confirm you have a problem, but you could vote to have it actioned and add your name to the emails cc list if you wish to be kept informed of progress).

You don't seem to have tried the usual diagnostic approaches - Safe Mode and New Profile.

Safe mode or turning off the plugins does not work with this bug. If they are still installed firefox will open plugincontainer, the plugins need to be uninstalled or disabled at OS level.

"clearing Cookies will start an instance of plugin-container for almost all of the plugins installed on the system, regardless of enable/disable state for each one."

Hello All,

I have downloaded ver 4.0.1 of FF a couple of days ago. The new version seems to be behaving a great deal better than ver 4.0 of FF. I have to still run it through its paces to see if there is still the memory leakage. After just a short time of usage I am finding it a great deal better to deal with. Task mgr. is showing less CPU usage for shorter periods of time after both a cold boot as well as a boot from "stand by" mode.

Still not great, reason is it still seems to be slow (john99 it is not due to a slow internet connection, a level zero ans. I am looking for level 2&3 ans. here). What is the reason for this? Why is FF not optimized for speed (not necessary for all out speed, but better than it currently is performing at while initializing/start-up.) If I had to guess, since I do not have any bench marks to go against, I would say it is running slower than the 3.xx ver. (early versions) of FF.

Many Thanks losinthecloud

P.S. John99 w/r/t to Plug-in refer to an earlier post where I state the following: Plug-ins ==> have disabled all, none running. Failed to mention at the O/S level.

Alright some explain to me this. I run firefox which I love the browser but the way it sucks up all my CPU I have no choice but to ditch it. I run the program and it climbs up and steals so much allocated memory it isn't even funny. One day it hit over 1,000,000K. I took a screenshot but apparently it didn't catch my task manager. Here is another instance of when it almost hit 750,000K

I run the default theme with only 3 extentions. One is the ad block plus, the other is web developer toolbar and the last being firebug. So what would make it climb so high everytime I open it? Oh and I have like 3 tabs open and it does that.

http://i55.tinypic.com/24odnyh.png

lostinthecloud,

disabling the plugins does NOT solve the specific problem of the bug I referred to. It is a fault and causes plugincontainer to open for plugins that ARE disabled. Firefox should not do this.

It is a known issue that developers are looking at, but presumably other things are getting a higher priority at the moment.

virtuosity1457

May I suggest you start your own thread by asking a question. Provide full details and hope someone will try to help you.

Note firefox is now on version 7, and some are speaking favourably about the memory improvements it is supposed to have see: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/09/firefox-7-is-lean-and-fast/

Have you tried Firefox 7 yet ?

Ok, I found the solution (for at least my boxes!) Yay!

The trouble is that Firefox changed the amount of HTTP connections it permits simultaneously from 30 (pre version 6) up to 256 for version 7. Each connection uses CPU and Memory!!!!!

I won't ponder why they did that, but the fix is easy:

Lower the max number of HTTP connections

 In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
     The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise!, to continue to the about:config page. 
 In the Filter box at the top, type network.http.max-connections.
 Double-click on the network.http.max-connections preference, the "Enter integer value" dialog box will open.
 In the field, type 30 which was the default value in old versions of Firefox and click OK.

My version 7.0.1 firefox suddenly started working! Yay!