Maximum PC

OK, I thought that Mozilla had fixed the problem with memory with Firefox 3.0, but apparently after about three hours of web browsing and web development (nothing too extensive--no videos or online games, just checking email, and doing some research and some file downloading for my web development projects) I noticed that Firefox was constantly using almost 350 MB of RAM.

I had only about four or five tabs open, but again, nothing too drastic. Anybody else experience this??? I have 4GB of RAM in my system so memory isn't a worry, but after about 100 - 150 MB of RAM usage, Firefox can get slow at times, especially when accessing any web pages...

For now, I close the browser once every two or three hours of use (which helps some), but still it's a pain to have to reload everything again...

suggestions or comments?

Running Firefox 3.6, few tabs open, e-mail, MPC and a streaming video on Win7 Pro x64 and getting about 230 mb RAM usage. I have maybe 20 add-ons also. TBH, its never been really high even with lots of things open.

Windows 7 x64 Firefox 3.6.2, 7 tabs open, essential addons: 126MB of RAM. Try reinstalling Firefox, and uninstalling addons & themes.

Win7 x64, Firefox 3.6.2, same set-up and 126 mb of RAM now.

I might have to try that...

Although this is my third restore of Windows (unfortunately) and thus my third install of Firefox.... The only add-ons that I have running are NoScript, which I won't give up for anything, and the VideoHelper Video Downloader add-in (which may be the reason I'm using so much RAM). I'll try disabling them and see what happens...

OK, I disabled the video download helper, and found a few others that I didn't know where there (like a Windows Genuine Check plug-in, and something with Microsoft Silverlight). Anyway, it seems to be doing better (only about 100-110 MB right now).

I'll still have to do another all-night "marathon programming session" (which I do sometimes to keep on track with my projects) to see if it gets out of hand again. So far, so good.

I do know for a fact ther are no viruses, spyware or malware on the system, so these are not an issue (i check daily for this stuff).

Well after a while its 240 mb now. Still nowhere that 350.

Well, OK i've been known to have up to 10 tabs open, so that might do it as well (still, nothing exnteisve like video or anything, just looking up information on programming/tutorials/help sites, etc).

Now I just have to figure out that with 4GB of RAM, why is the computer still paging like 800-900MB of data....?

I would do a little troubleshooting and clear anything Firefox related. Remove all plugins, uninstall Firefox, and reinstall. Fire it up and just see what it uses then.

Yeah, uninstall Firefox, reinstall it, and then install one addon at a time, and test to see how much memory it uses.

Right now, with FF 3.6.2, XP Home SP3 and one window open, I have 117MB of memory used. No biggie, considering that I have about six add-ons. What I find amazing is that CPU use will hover around 2-5% just by moving my cursor on a Firefox page, and occasionally spike to around 25% when scrolling pages. No wonder my F@H WUs take longer when I'm on the net.

FF 3.6.2, with 1 tab open and 13 active addons, using 63MB of RAM.
One of the addons is RAMBack. Might want to give that a try.

Well, since I disabled some of the extra plug-ins and add-ons I had installed (like the Windows Genuine Advantage from you know who, and the Video DownloadHelper add-on, my memory usage has been cut down to about 125 MB or so. I think it was because Video DownloadHelper was caching videos clips from places like that use Flash video that's embedded in a page, as I visited various websites (I think it also tried to cash a lot of the flash videos used for ads).

So, ever since i disabled those, it's been fine. Now I just have to figure out why Windows is still paging close to 1GB on the hard disk....
Is it better to put the page file onto a seperate hard drive (like maybe an older 20GB IDE drive)? I have a spare one lying around that's not doing anything (and amazingly enough, still works great).

It's better to put pagefile on a separate drive as long as its not slower then your C drive. An old 20GB IDE drive will be so slow that it'll hurt. Might still want to try that RAMBack. It freed 50MB of RAM in my system.

That's I guess what i figured after I posted that... an IDE drive would probably hurt performance, so at that piont, I'd be better off letting it page from the C drive.

OK, now I know USB 2.0 is slower than SATA, but would that help (I'm thinkinga bout maybe using the ReadyBoost system built into Windows, or does this really only help with disk caching and accessing files??)