Technology, Support, and News Forum

[phileysmiley]

It's happening again now that I've upgraded back to 3.5.2 on my XP x64 rig (after having tried it and then downgraded). My memory also starts at around 550,000 and eventually gets to over 1,000,000 and about 90% of my available RAM and I have to shut it down and restart it.

And it looks like I'm not the only one:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fi ... 8&ie=UTF-8

I'll be humming along just fine then all of a sudden I'm at 100% and can't work. FF tabs won't close except from the taskbar, FF windows won't open or close -- work just screams to a halt.

This Mozilla thread seems to nail it for me too:
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_fo ... &forumId=1

Everyone there seems to be having the exact same problem.

I close FF but it continues to run in background @ 100% and I have to terminate with Win Task Mgr. I restart FF and with same windows open and it runs fine (for a while), then maxes out again.

It appears to be independent of websites that are open. Possibly a theme or extension that is causing problem but I can't track it down 'cause it doesn't always happen. I am running XP with all SPs up to date. 3.x of FF didn't have this issue.

I have a similar problem. FF 3.5 runs fine, for a while then increases, but if I close FF 3.5 CPU goes to 50%. Open FF again, it opens as a new program, and CPU goes to 100 %.

I have exact the same issue.
What's wrong with FF 3.5??

This is very similar to what was happening with the previous version of Firefox. I'm having the same problem with 3.5 as before, with almost constant 100% memory usage. I even tried only having a blank tab open and the memory usage was at 100%, then drop, then shoot back up. It seems that Firefox now uses memory all the time, whether or not a site is open of actively downloading. This has become a major issue and makes Firefox no better than IE, when it used to me a much smaller and simpler program. Is there any fix to this overt and constant usage of memory?

Tried a re-install. Worked fine for a little while, then it started misbehaving again. Disabled all extensions - no difference. It almost appears to be some weird form of memory leakage that eventually drives the CPU into a paging frenzy.

Well ... I thought I had the problem nailed as a flash file issue. I spoke too soon. This 100% CPU usage in FF3.5 has become a major aggravation. I am unable to get more than about 20-30 min before it maxes out @ 100% CPU and essentially hangs and I have to kill the process.

I think that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. It appears the problem is generic and widespread and not dependent on XP or Vista OS.

God forbid I have to move back to IE.

People seem to pop in and say they "found the solution," only to come back and say "never mind." It seems to be intermittent so hard to track down and independent of any particular plug-in or file.

There are 5 pages of posts there. Even people who completely uninstall FF, all the settings, and all ther plugins, and disable Java, still have the problem. Check out this guy:

I'm the original author of this thread. Since I started it, I had a complete meltdown of my system due to a HDD failure so I started fresh. Obviously, I loaded XP with all SPs and a fresh install of Firefox 3.5.2 - no extentions, themes or any thing else - bare bones.

I still get a max-out on CPU and if I leave FF idleing, its memory usage goes from about 67,000K to over 200,000K and I ususally have to terminate the process (FF).

I see all kinds of reasons being posted on this issue but with my bare bones install, I would suggest that it is problem internal to the FF kernel.

It's just crazy. For example, I like to have my windows maximized. If a FF window is not maximized (the maximize icon is a square) I click it and my CPU shoots to 100% and it won't respond. I go to close a tab and I click the X on the tab and it causes my CPU to shoot to 100%. I click the taskbar to bring a 2nd window into focus and nothing happens.

Check this out. All I did was MOUSE OVER the maximize icon and my CPU shot to 100%. I didn't even click it. I simply moused over it.

The consensus seems to be that it's a bug in the kernel so there is no particular conflict or association which is causing it.

Anyone here have a clue?

[Grav!ty Profile]

No ideas. I'm using 3.5.1 in XP predominantly and that seems to be the only version of 3.5 that is OK, for me at least. I also use it in Windows 7 and Vista X64.

Earlier this week I had that problem with chipset drivers in Windows 7 which caused freezing of Firefox and Windows Explorer - the whole system froze - but new drivers sorted that out and I haven't had a recurrence, so it seems unrelated to Firefox.

[JabbaPapa Profile]

I just use Opera, and apart from some occasional glitches with Beta versions and some websites that insist on being "optimised for IE and/or FF", I am VERY happy with it.

And I've always got IE for those sites ...

[phileysmiley]

I've given up on it again. Rolled back to 3.0.1 for the 3rd time. I'm staying here until they fix it.

BTW I have 3.5.2 installed on 3 other rigs: a desktop with XP, a laptop with XP, and a laptop with Vista x64. I have NO problem with it on any of them. It was ONLY on this rig with XP x64 that this has been happening (and this is my primary rig/OS).

So...I am very happy with 3.5.2 on 3 of my rigs and 3.0.1 on the 4th one.

[Grav!ty Profile]

Here's a page where you can give detailed feedback: http://hendrix.mozilla.org/ and

here you can file a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

A 114 bugs filed on 3.5.2 today

[Computerwiz2489 Profile Website]

I don't know what's been going on but when FF3 was released everything went downhill for me. FF occasionally chews up my CPU cycles too so you're not alone and when I close it 80% of the time it won't actually close but stay in the memory, chewing up CPU cycles and slowing my system down. For me this has been happening since the first release of 3. Apparently it seems to me like it only happens to me and one other friend of mine and no one else...

I've since moved onto Google Chrome, since IE8 is pretty much broken in Vista for me as well (keeps initiating DEP...)

[songstruck Profile]

I have had the same problem with Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP. However, if I start Firefox in safe mode [from the Start>All Programs>Mozilla>Mozilla Firefox "Safe Mode"], the cpu usage stays in "normal range." That makes me think that changes I have made to the Firefox default settings may be responsible for the behavior? I bet lots of users have changed default settings to speed up Firefox, etc. and add-ons/extensions change settings, as well.

So far, it's the only thing that has worked for me. Does that work for anyone else??

[JSJ54 Profile]

I have wasted hours on this problem and like so many others I thought it was just me. I'm a long way from PC literate and just wish someone would sort it.

I'm off to Chrome anyway.