Firefox, virtual memory

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:47 pm

Hi folks,

For the past month or two I've been getting low virtual memory messages on my PC. I have ove 20gb free on my HD and 1.5GB of RAM(not sure if either is relevant), so does anyone know what my virtual memory setting should be?

Also, I've noticed that for the past two weeks, Firefix has been using huge amounts of memory, oftentimes hitting between 250 and 650KB. It used to run at around 100kb so this a drastic increase. Could that possibly be causing the virtual memory problems? And why is Firefox suddenly hogging so much of my pc's resources? I've ran countless virus scans and spyware scans with several different programs and everything keeps coming up clean.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Tony

Post by **Admin** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:48 pm

What version of Firefox?

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:51 pm

I'm using 1.0.7.

And my last post should have said Firefox was using between 250-650 MB, not KB.

Post by **Admin** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:56 pm

You may want to check out http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=354828 .

I use FF 1.5.0.1 and currently have 10 tabs open. According to Task Manager, firefox.exe is using 84,424K of memory.

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:58 pm

Admin wrote:You may want to check out http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=354828 .

I use FF 1.5.0.1 and currently have 10 tabs open. According to Task Manager, firefox.exe is using 84,424K of memory.

Thanks for the advice, RJ.

I have 3 tabs open and firefox.exe is using 626,640K of memory.

Post by **Admin** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 4:02 pm

Hockeynut! wrote:I have 3 tabs open and firefix.exe is using 626,640K of memory.

I'm not an expert but that seems a tad high.

Post by **tifosi77** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:11 pm

Do you have any extensions or themes installed?

I'm running 1.5.0.1 with three tabs up and it's using about 55k.

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:14 pm

tifosi77 wrote:Do you have any extensions or themes installed?

I'm running 1.5.0.1 with three tabs up and it's using about 55k.

I'm using AdBlock and BugMeNot. I also have the Noia 2.0 Extreme theme installed.

I took RJ's advice and installed the newest version. Right now with 2 tabs open I'm using 156,100kb. Much better than my earlier 600,000 but still a little high maybe?

Thanks, Tifosi77!

spoon · Post by **spoon** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:18 pm

what all do you have running in the tabs?

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:32 pm

Well, I closed one tab since I posted that.

Right now all I have open is the LGP message boards and I'm using 156,354kb.

Hockeynut! · Post by **Hockeynut!** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:56 pm

Just another update. Firefox is up to 346,248kb. The longer I keep the browser open it just keeps growing and growing.

It's alive! =)

bfjosh · Post by **bfjosh** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:12 am

Firefox has some serious issues with Memory leaks, and some javascript problems that leak memory too. but as always, your favourite browser allows for enoughcustomisation to work around it.

Open a new tab and enter about:config in the location bar, this should bring up a massive list of preferences, but be careful with it. Anyway, enter browser.cache.memory in the filter, and check that browser.cache.memory.enable is set to true, and check if you have browser.cache.memory.capacity, if not right click and choose new > integer, and name it browser.cache.memory.capacity

I have my capacity set to 16000, which stops firefox getting out of hand.

You might also want to check the values of browser.cache.disk.enable and browser.cache.disk.capacity too, and if you are still having troubles browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers tells firefox how many pages to keep in memory, try setting it to a number between 1 & 8, or 0 for 0 pages cached. -1 lets firefox choose itself.

Hope that can help you.

Post by **Admin** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:03 am

Another thing you may want to try is a clean install of FF 1.5. Here are the steps: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 1279#clean

Post by **tifosi77** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:48 pm

bfjosh wrote:Firefox has some serious issues with Memory leaks, and some javascript problems that leak memory too. but as always, your favourite browser allows for enoughcustomisation to work around it.

Open a new tab and enter about:config in the location bar, this should bring up a massive list of preferences, but be careful with it. Anyway, enter browser.cache.memory in the filter, and check that browser.cache.memory.enable is set to true, and check if you have browser.cache.memory.capacity, if not right click and choose new > integer, and name it browser.cache.memory.capacity

I have my capacity set to 16000, which stops firefox getting out of hand.

You might also want to check the values of browser.cache.disk.enable and browser.cache.disk.capacity too, and if you are still having troubles browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers tells firefox how many pages to keep in memory, try setting it to a number between 1 & 8, or 0 for 0 pages cached. -1 lets firefox choose itself.

Hope that can help you.

That's really useful to know, thank you for posting.

I was worried the Fox was becoming self-aware and on the verge of eating our dear Hockeynut.

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