Mulitiple Instances Of plugin-container.exe

[cheesedude]

After reading this

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=633427

it appears that even if plug-ins are disabled the process spawning is triggered by removing LSO cookies that occur in plug-ins like flash. Apparently FF opens the plug-ins to clear the cookies. Not sure why I'm not seeing this on Mac. You might go to the above link and add what you are seeing on FF4 on XP.

Just before reading your post I discovered that clearing the history (Tools -> Clear Recent History) spawns the multiple plugin-container.exe processes. I read a similar report over at bugzilla.mozilla.org and tested it and indeed it spawned a bunch of instances.

I think that's what is doing it. I frequently clear my history. Firefox never behaved like this with 3.6.x. Later tonight I'll do a little web surfing and not clear my history for a while and see what happens.

Thanks for your help.

[RobertJ]

That may be it. I never clear my history. I use BetterPrivacy to purge my LSO cookies when the browser shuts down. Let me know what happens in your experiment.

[RobertJ]

THAT IS IT

I saved my profile since I didn't want to loose my history then launched FF and then cleared my history. Four plug-in processes spawned.

One mystery solved and only a few hundred more to go.

.

[cheesedude]

Actually, the mystery continues. I have cleared my history 5 times in the last hour and not a single instance of plugin-container.exe was spawned.

So, we have a situation where during the day Firefox starts a bunch of plugin-container.exe processes when clearing browser history but at night it does not.

[KWierso]

It's clearing cookies that triggers the plugin-containers, not the history.

[renphi]

It's clearing cookies that triggers the plugin-containers, not the history.

Ah so, the multiple containers I've shown here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25648507- mean I am not alone.

[KWierso]

Yeah, if you clear your cookies, Firefox spins up each installed (doesn't matter if they're enabled or not) plugin to give them each a chance to delete their stored personal data from you.
If you've disabled out of process plugins, you won't see each plugin-container (since that's only used for out of process plugins), but firefox.exe's own memory usage will go up slightly.
Even though it starts up plugin-container for disabled plugins, they still are disabled (so if Flash is disabled, it won't suddenly start playing youtube videos if you've cleared your cookies).

The real question is what to do with all of the opened plugin-containers after they've finished doing their thing. If it's a disabled plugin, it should probably just kill the process after it finishes clearing its cookies.

But what about enabled plugins? If the plugin-container process was started just for clearing the cookies, it could probably kill the process without any consequences (unless you've started to do something with that plugin elsewhere as it is clearing its cookies).

[itsmagicvi]

Hi,
I have just accepted an upgrade to Firefox 3.6.16. Since then every time I try to access sites which use Flash the browser stops working and I get a "Whoops soory" message. It has to be Firefox as it does not happen with E8.
I have run Advanced Ssystem Organiser to clear out spyware and bugs etc but no luck.
Do I have to reinstall an earlier version?

[RobertJ]

Hi,
I have just accepted an upgrade to Firefox 3.6.16. Since then every time I try to access sites which use Flash the browser stops working and I get a "Whoops soory" message. It has to be Firefox as it does not happen with E8.
I have run Advanced Ssystem Organiser to clear out spyware and bugs etc but no luck.
Do I have to reinstall an earlier version?

Start a different thread. This is on a separate topic.

.

[RobertJ]

The source of this issue has been identified as bug 633427. Having multiple people note that they see it simply clutters this thread. Am locking. NOTE, do not post in bugzilla that you have the issue it isn't helpful. If you want to do anything simply vote for it in bugzilla which should raise its priority.