High CPU Utilization by Firefox 2.*
 

In Firefox 1.* it seemed like lots of tabs (2-8 in my case) caused high memory utilization...that has not gone away in 2.* but my boxes have more RAM now
But in FF 2.* I am getting high CPU utilization (25-70%) frequently and even when I'm not doing anything...
I typically have the following open:
* NY times
* CNN
* BBC
* Yahoo finance
* Yahoo mail
* Flyertalk
* NOAA weather (no adverts)
I suspect CNN because it always seems to be "auto-refreshing"...but wonder if there is some setting in FF I can tweak to get some resources back

Download the following extensions to turn off all ads and flash components. This should save you on the CPU usage.

....... Plus
....... Filterset.G Updater
Flashblock
NoScript

Goodluck :)

I've given up on FF... 250k usage consistantly on just 4-5 tabs.

no thanks....

Sounds like a bad extension. Try turning your plugins off one at a time. I usually have 10-15 tabs open and only ever see around 5% cpu and 60Mb of memory usage.

The number of tabs I have concurrently varies, but I suffer from this problem as well. It may also be a dodgy extension.

FWIW, I've the following extensions:

- ....... Plus
- British English Dictionary
- Forecastfox
- FoxClocks
- GMail Manager
- Google Toolbar
- Talkback

I also have iFox theme in use.

Everything is up-to-date.

At its worst, it got up to 99% CPU utilisation and about 90Mb memory usage.

I don't recall this problem when FF2 was first released. Since updating to 2.0.0.1, this problem occurs more often.

It may not be Firefox. Maybe you have something else infecting your machine. I had a similar problem and reinstalled windows and everything else with a clean slate. The problem went away.

I frequently have as many as 30-40 tabs open at any one time and almost never see my RAM usage above 40% and my CPU usage is about the same or much lower.

It's happening on both my laptop and my desktop...
I've taken the advice of earlier posters and started fresh with my extensions...and add some additional ad/script/flash related ones

I'm so glad to hear that I'm not the only person who has been having this problem! :)

The worst allocations I think I saw was 99% CPU and 250MB of memory. It improved somewhat after I removed StumbleUpon and Yoono. Now, after removing those two, I'm still seeing high resource use, but the highest utilization is closer to 100mb of memory.

I consistently use NoScript & ......./AdblockG.

In my case, FF also has not been good about wanting to release resources when I exit the program.

I'm not at all willing to go back to IE, and as my PC is old, if I scrape and reinstall I will have to re-up to SP2, etc as my install disk is original XP Pro. Not a terribly appealing choice. I suppose I could try going back to a restore point...

I'm scrupulous about running antivirus & antispyware checks and have been looking at everything very carefully to see if there's anything else that's "suspicious". Nothing else is doing anything noticeable, in any case....

Another indication that is is Firefox-related is that If I do exit FF and re-open it, it will take a while before the resource allocation climbs back up.

I think I will just keep disabling extensions and see where that takes me...

Is anyone else who has this problem using Foxytunes? I see that Leumas also is using Forecast Fox... I hope that's not the problem!

I have had this 100% CPU problem on not only FireFox 2.x but alos the final two versions of Furefix 1.xx.

I suggets you try the Maxthon 2.0 beta.

i have firefox 1.5.xx

with FT running, showed 112meg

adblocked two FT logos, and dropped to 32meg. had previously adblocked everything else I could.
cpu usage 2%. this is a very cheap hp with an amd 3400 sempron(i buy disposable computors)

I uninstalled ALL extensions.
Then I installed:
AddBlock Plus (prev just was .......)
Flashblock (prev recommendation from this thread)
Forecast Fox
NoScript
Filterset G

Result:
* 115mb utilization for FF...a bit less than before
* CPU under 20% but that's still a far cry from the single digit I would prefer..

I wonder if this is a Forecast Fox problem....??

No need for FiltersetG with Adblock Plus
 

From FAQ at http://adblockplus.org/en/faq_project#filterset.g

"Do I need to install Filterset.G Updater?

No. Actually, it is recommended not to use Filterset.G with ....... Plus. There are several reasons for this:

* Filterset.G has been intentionally made incompatible with the built-in subscriptions feature in ....... Plus, updating Filterset.G requires a separate extension which basically duplicates existing functionality.
* Filterset.G is not optimized for use with ....... Plus, it will slow down your browsing considerably more than any other filter list.
* Filterset.G makes heavy use of very complicated regular expressions with the consequence that finding the source of problems is difficult and fixing those problems is even more so. In fact, Filterset.G is fixing most problems with exception rules which creates a problem on its own (see next point).
* Filterset.G contains a considerable number of exception rules. This is a big problem because exception rules cannot be overridden. It happened on several occasions that exception rules from Filterset.G whitelisted actual ads making these ads unblockable — something users usually blamed ....... Plus for.

While Filterset.G has had its uses in the past, nowadays other filter lists are certainly a better choice. If you already have Filterset.G Updater installed, you can uninstall the extension and remove the Filterset.G subscription in the ....... Plus Preferences dialog. Feel free to choose any subscription from the list then."

Something about FF 2.0.1 is causing high CPU utilization with several popular extensions, including the weather extension I used to use (I believe it's called ForecastFox). I second the recommendation about trying to disable your extensions and see if you can identify a culprit.

my suggestion would be to do a complete uninstall/reinstall (and make sure all extensions are off)..

or..you can try starting up in safe-mode and if it works and doesnt take up memory, then you know its an extension.

I had similar problems in the past, however, the firefox forums have been great in giving answers and helped solve the problem.

sigh...
 

yep, it was Forecast Fox. (Of course it would be my favorite extension....) I disabled it and restarted and CPU utilization and memory is down to a nice normal level. :(

I think I may have found the problem and it's not (at least at this point) Forecastfox...
Typically I'll have 2-3 separate instances of F/F running each with multiple tabs.
This last week I've limited myself to one instance with more tabs...CPU has remained 'calm' so far...haven't watched memory as I have 2gb and was never close to running out.

This thread was timely as I had noticed that FF was using up usually 120mb and up to 160mb of memory (no CPU issues for me). Now I understand when I open many tabs, but when I close them the memory usage doesn't drop.

So I uninstalled unused extensions and disabled ForecasFox but this didn't seem to help.

Then I found this which did the trick - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../1327586/posts

I don't believe anything he said after reading that.

BTW, I'm not having any cpu utilization problems with FF2.x. But I don't run things like forecastfox or anything else that does anything in the background that could increase cpu utilitzation when I don't need it. I have Fasterfox, fireftp, flashblock, flashgot and linkification installed. (in addition to talkbalk and Dom Inspector.) I don't enable the cache-ahead features in fasterfox.

There's probably a memory leak in 2.x. I'm sure it will be plugged eventually. If you want to reclaim the leaked memory, you have to completely restart ff. If you have enough memory in your system, it probably doesn't matter. If you run taskmgr and look at the performance pane, if your peak commit charge is greater than the amount of physical memory you have installed, then you could benefit from more memory, or perhaps by restarting ff.

-David

I have the same problem with Netscape 8.1.2, and it apparently runs a program called "updatelists.exe", which also comes online and takes up almost 100% CPU time - anyone can confirm this?

Well, after watching things for a few more days I am finding that the memory usage still creeps up like everyone else has reported, but the CPU usage is still behaving itself without the forecast fox. I haven't really had any time to do much more since I posted. I can live with fairly high memory usage until I can take the time to tweak much easier than I can live with high CPU utilization. Gotta admit, somehow this whole experience leaves me just a little bit disappointed with Firefox. Guess I'll just have to try to be patient and wait for an incremental fix to the slow memory leak....I'm not going back to IE!!!

If you really want to, you could find the bug in bugzilla and add yourself to the cc-list. I'm sure they will plug some of the memory leaks eventually.

-David

Google Toolbar??
 

Just after reading this, a friend asked me to look at some funny behavior on his machine (Thinkpad T-series, I beleive)

I don't think it was related to the actual problem, but I also noticed that his CPU usage was unusually high. Checked and it was only when FF was running, but he wasn't running nay of the suspected add-ons.

The only thing there was google toolbar. I removed it and the CPU usage was down. Downloaded it again from google and reinstalled and no bump in usage.

It may have been because I chose not to enable page ranking and I have no idea if he had it enabled before, or it may have been a new revision of the toolbar software, but maybe that'll be a clue for someone else.

Didn't the google toolbar have a folding@home option at one time? I seem to recall that it did, but I don't know if you had to download a special version to get the f@h stuff included or not, and I'm not sure if it still exists or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Toolbar

According to the wikipedia article, Google Compute (the f@h tie-in) ended in 2005.

-David

Another interesting read:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Memory_Leak

It seems the problem of memory usage and CPU usage is at least partially caused by ForecastFox. Of course, Firefox and ForecastFox are blaming each other for the problem.

Now, with the release of 2.0.0.2 of Firefox and 0.9.5.2 of ForecastFox, the CPU problem seems to be gone. It may take a few days of usage before I notice any different regarding the memory issue, but now, my Firefox hardly registers in CPU utilisation...