[Help - Software] Firefox lagging.

[Skylar1]

So, I'm not sure why, but ever since about a month ago, firefox seems to be using up more memory on my cpu, and I've also noticed that it's stalling quite a bit whenever I'm using it.

quick example would be when I'm scrolling on a page, or even just typing a post, it'll stop for a few seconds before resuming what it was supposed to be doing.

I've tried clearing cookies/history and restarting it, but that doesn't seem to help.

Not sure why it's doing this, but it's probably something simple I've overlooked. x__x

can someone help please, because this is quite annoying.. u__u;

[Hanamaru Kunikida]

Have you try uninstalling/re-installing? That's the only thing I can tell you, sorry.

[Eris]

It happens as gunk accumulates over time. Try removing your firefox user data directory completely. This will of course remove everything, bookmarks, history, the works.

On windows 7 it's in

C:\Users\User name\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
C:\Users\User name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles


You can also accomplish this by starting "Firefox.exe -ProfileManager" and deleting, creating a new profile.

[Skylar1]

hm.. I didn't see the "appdata" part..

How do I do the firefox.exe profile manager thing?

Another question I have, is since I have quite a bit of bookmarks, I'm wondering how to download them since they'll be deleted, and also, by doing this, do I have to re-download the ad-blocker and script-blocker, or will those be untouched?

[Hanamaru Kunikida]

Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Import and Backup > Backup.

And when you want to restore, just click restore instead of backup and then Choose File.

[Skylar1]

kk, so I had Aku walk me through it, Eris.

Everything seems to be working just fine again. Thanks!

Edit:

@Eris (http://www.animeforum.com/member.php?u=11662):
@Aku no Hikari (http://www.animeforum.com/member.php?u=199887):

err.. wait a minute..

Somethings not quite right here. So I cleaned out everything last night like you said to, so this morning, I decided to do a little bit of a test just to make sure it's fine.

So what I did was I pulled up task manager, and monitored it since starting up firefox. I only have 2 tabs open (facebook and AF), and it seems that over the past hour and a half since starting it, the memory that firefox uses has slowly creeped up from starting at 70,000kb, to 100,000kb, to 150,000kb, to 200,000kb, to 250,000kb, to right at this moment, it's at 323,000kb. And it seems to only keep increasing slowly over time.

o_O; and, firefox is starting to lag a little bit again. Why? why would only having 2 simple tabs open cause this to happen? I'm pretty sure it's not a virus or anything since I use Avast almost religiously, so... like wth? why the lag still?

it's up to 400,000kb now.. -____-;

[Ranshiin]

So what I did was I pulled up task manager, and monitored it since starting up firefox. I only have 2 tabs open (facebook and AF), and it seems that over the past hour and a half since starting it, the memory that firefox uses has slowly creeped up from starting at 70,000kb, to 100,000kb, to 150,000kb, to 200,000kb, to 250,000kb, to right at this moment, it's at 323,000kb. And it seems to only keep increasing slowly over time.

o_O; and, firefox is starting to lag a little bit again. Why? why would only having 2 simple tabs open cause this to happen? I'm pretty sure it's not a virus or anything since I use Avast almost religiously, so... like wth? why the lag still?

it's up to 400,000kb now.. -____-;

I guess that would be what is known as a "memory leak."

You're not alone on this fortunately - I'm using Firefox 4 and even I'm able to watch the memory usage go up in Task Manager. But unfortunately, there isn't really anything you can do about it except occasionally close Firefox completely, and then reopen it.

... or get more RAM for your computer - but the former option is far cheaper.

[Aku no Hikari]

I explained that to you on MSN (the garbage collection problem). Though it's not the accurate term, it's often called memory leaking. (which is something different, but is one of the causes for this memory problem)

The best thing you can do about it is closing Firefox and re-opening every couple hours or so. There are some memory tweaks you could use, but I wouldn't advise it.