100 % CPU usage makes Firefox unusable :-(

Discussion of bugs in Mozilla Firefox
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eistea
Posts: 9
Joined: December 14th, 2004, 7:23 pm

100 % CPU usage makes Firefox unusable :-(

Post by eistea »

Hi,

just installed Firefox on my system and really loved it, especially the elaborate import feature for IE bookmarks, passwords, form inputs etc. really impressed me. But unfortunately the perfect start didn't meet its promises when it came to browsing websites :-/

After a random time (about five to ten minutes) FF starts to eat up all CPU power and becomes irresponsive. Sometimes waiting helps a little, often only killing the task helps.

I'm quite an experienced software user and also have some programming and debugging experience but I am not able to find a pattern behind this behavior. Even tried to find some clue by using Sysinternal's RegistryMonitor and FileMonitor tools but didn't come up with a result. When FF's CPU load goes up, there seems to be no file or registry activity at all. Disabling firewall and virus scan also didn't show any positive effect.

So I'm forced to go back to IE and I unfortunately I can't help feeling a little bit disappointed by such a behavior of a version 1.0 software :-/ (I always thought "1.0" has some real meaning when it comes to open source software.) On the other side I really appreciate the great work of the Mozilla/Firefox community, but please, don't sacrifice your beliefs and principles just to gain a small advantage in the race.

cheers
eistea

System: Thinkpad notebook, Windows XP SP1, DSL connection
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Äkiidoll
Posts: 5473
Joined: August 16th, 2003, 2:03 pm
Location: USA
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Post by Äkiidoll »

Its not a bug, it the settings on your PC. I use
Firefox 1.0, Moxilla 1.7.3, and Thunderbird 1.0
all on a PC running Win98/PII chipset/64mb RAMM,
without a hitch or hogging system resources.

With Firefox 1.0 and Mozilla 1.7.3 and MSN Msngr and
Dreamweaver MX open, Im still at 55% resources free.

Not sure how to free up some of your system memory
in the settings. My first start would be to clean out the
system tray of all the apps that are loaded/hogging
memory in the back ground from apps that are open
and being used now.

Im not saying you have a systen tray full of apps running
in the background, but I have seen alot of users with
10-20 apps in the systen tray who boot the PC and have
only 50% system memory before 1 app is even launched.
A prisoner of Christ Jesus, by His stripes I was healed
eistea
Posts: 9
Joined: December 14th, 2004, 7:23 pm

Post by eistea »

CaetckGurl wrote:Its not a bug, it the settings on your PC.
[...]
Not sure how to free up some of your system memory
in the settings.


To be honest, I don't care at all if Firefox' inability to work with my PC configuration is defined as bug or not.
This is a 1.7 GHz Pentium M machine (2.5 GHz PC equivalent) with 512 MB RAM.

Photoshop works.
MS Office works.
WinDVD works.
Adobe Premiere works.
Apache works.
Quicktime works.
JBuilder works.
Visual Studio works.
Internet Explorer works.

... and so did all other programs, directly after installation and without changing my PC configuration or "freeing up some RAM".

Therefore, in this case, not my PC has to change to work with Firefox, Firefox has to change to work with my PC. If you have any idea how to accomplish this, just go ahead... ;)

eistea
PogusMagnus
Posts: 30
Joined: February 26th, 2004, 6:06 pm

Post by PogusMagnus »

Flash animations are known to hog the CPU. Did your browsing experience include lots of Flash?
Proud Firefox user since Phoenix 0.4!
eistea
Posts: 9
Joined: December 14th, 2004, 7:23 pm

Post by eistea »

PogusMagnus wrote:Flash animations are known to hog the CPU. Did your browsing experience include lots of Flash?


No, not lots of flash (only the one or other ad banner), and no Java or PDFs at all.
It just happens after a random time of surfing.

The browser then becomes irresponsive to the mouse wheel. Scrolling is only possible by dragging the scroll bars at the right. Even Page down/up and cursor keys don't work any longer. Menus need ages to open and menus entries only become visible when moving the mouse cursor over them. Clicking menu entries has no effect. And closing dialogs or the browser via the x-button in the upper right corner is no longer possible.

These are some of the symptoms.
Melv
Posts: 10
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 11:46 am

Post by Melv »

It sounds like you haven't installed any extensions yet, but if you did, disable them and try again.

You can also try 3rd-party builds like moox's.
magicianb
Posts: 1
Joined: December 17th, 2004, 12:31 am

Post by magicianb »

I have the same problem. I have 1gb of ram and I can run 40 IE windows with no problems. But after awhile with firefox, everything starts slowing down and even one window open takes 100% CPU when I click on links and evne when I'm scrolling its much less responsive. This is really annoying. It works great when I restart my computer, but for some reason it seems like it never really closes any tabs or something since it happens after I browse for awhile.
jbash
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Joined: November 17th, 2003, 1:39 pm
Location: Chicago
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Post by jbash »

I had this problem but it seems to have been a problem with XP SP2 and my AMD Athlon 64 chip (or potentially any 64bit chip that does DEP in hardware). But I don't imagine many folks have this configuration so I hadn't mentioned it. I know the originator of this thread said he had a thinkpad with XP SP1 so I knew this wasn't relevant to him/her. I mention it now on the off chance someone in this thread is using at Itanium or Athlon 64 processor...

jim b
Bullethead
Posts: 2
Joined: December 28th, 2004, 10:09 am

Post by Bullethead »

I am having the same problem. I am running XP SP2, 512 MB RAM and MSN. I have Firefox and Thunderbird running on a number of systems. The only one I have this problem with is the one connecting via MSN
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Davehal
Posts: 23
Joined: September 16th, 2004, 3:31 am

Post by Davehal »

Ok folks,
just try after installing : FlashBlock
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/index.html
I had the same pb with CPU near 80 or 100 %
Using FB : not any pb of CPU, a charm.
Maybe it's something else, but you can try..
jhunter
Posts: 1
Joined: December 29th, 2004, 3:36 pm

Post by jhunter »

Sorry to add a "Me too!" to this discussion, but the <b>only</b> bugbear I have with Mozilla Firefox is what I percieve to be its "instability".

This *is* a bug in Firefox, from what I can tell. Unfortunately it's so intermittent (only happens to me every few weeks) I honestly can't pin it down to anything specific.

eistea wrote:
PogusMagnus wrote:Flash animations are known to hog the CPU. Did your browsing experience include lots of Flash?


No, not lots of flash (only the one or other ad banner), and no Java or PDFs at all.
It just happens after a random time of surfing.

The browser then becomes irresponsive to the mouse wheel. Scrolling is only possible by dragging the scroll bars at the right. Even Page down/up and cursor keys don't work any longer. Menus need ages to open and menus entries only become visible when moving the mouse cursor over them. Clicking menu entries has no effect. And closing dialogs or the browser via the x-button in the upper right corner is no longer possible.

These are some of the symptoms.


I have pretty much exactly the same problems as the OP; however he is running Firefox on Windows and I am using it on Linux (RH9).

My browser breaks nearly as described above; the differences for me are that the cursor keys and menus do work. I normally notice first of all when the mouse scroll wheel stops working.

If it gets broken like this, I have learnt that I need to be really careful as if I open any dialog boxes, e.g. Print, or Add Bookmark, these can't be closed (either by clicking Cancel, or clicking on the X) and I have to kill the browser process. Instead, I make a new text document containing a list of all the URLs I have open in all my browser windows (usually lots!) and try to close the browser down one window at a time. When I then reload Firefox, it works fine for at least few weeks more..

I haven't mentioned this problem in the past - I've just been living with it.. but it has been bugging me since I first started using Firefox (I'd guess about a year ago). Each time a new release comes out, I eagerly upgrade in the hope that the bug is fixed!

FWIW, I'm using 1.0 now and haven't had the lockup since 1.0 was installed - but of course it's intermittent so I don't actually know if it has been finally fixed or not :-(

Anyway.. rant over.. I assume it's nothing platform-specific as it also affects me on Linux. I also doubt it is Flash specific, as any Flash animation in an open window continues to work as before.. To my untrained mind it seems to be something getting 'stuck' within the browser and preventing things from working / closing.. (Flash apps run *really* slowly on my PC (PIII-500), but that's beside the point and is another question for another day!)

I don't have any extensions active as they don't work anymore with 1.0 (BugMeNot and a right-click fixer).

Hope this helps someone,

Jonathan
judisohn
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Joined: July 11th, 2004, 9:01 am
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Post by judisohn »

Just another "me too." This problem has made Firefox 1.0 unusable for me on my PC. It's okay on my Macs, but it locks up and hogs CPU way too often. On my PC, I've had to go back to IE. I'm monitoring these forums hoping that someone will figure out what is going on and fix it. Please, don't assume that those of us dealing with this are trolls or clueless. It's a legitimate issue and it's one that will keep Mom & Pop Internet from giving up IE.

Once I know it's fixed, I'll get a nightly build. I've already tried uninstalling FF and starting over, helps for a little bit and then the problem is back. Namely, loading most websites causes CPU to spike to 100% and stay there for as long as 2 minutes before subsiding.

I have been suspecting some combination of the A9 toolbar and Flash, but I can't pin it down.
Judi Sohn
josephmei
Posts: 1
Joined: December 31st, 2004, 9:43 am

100 % CPU usage makes Firefox unusable :-(

Post by josephmei »

My experience has been consistent. It occurs after right clicking an image and then attempt to save it as <imagename.jpg> in a local folder. The first time Firefox responds after some delay and then shows the Download manager. But by the second or third attempt, Firefox gets into a 100% CPU usage. Apparently there is little choice except to kill the browser through Windows Task Manager. No problem when doing similar operation with Netscape 7.1 browser. I am using Windows 2000.
tentonnun
Posts: 1
Joined: December 17th, 2004, 2:44 pm

Post by tentonnun »

Yes, this exact same problem has happened on my computer...and 2 other computers here. Normally surfing the web is ok (sometimes it slows down but not repeatable for me) but when I start to save images or file it slows waaaaaay down and goes to %50 cpu usage (I guess that's since it's a p4 HT so it counts each virtual cpu as %50 of the total). The memory usage goes through the roof (400+megs), but it usually uses 150-200 so that's not completely insane. Just thought I'd pipe in . Using XP sp2 and FF 1.0. Nightlies dont help, but once it's fixed in the nightlies I'll gladly change.
Hazelip
Posts: 41
Joined: January 2nd, 2005, 9:08 am

Post by Hazelip »

I am having this exact same problem. I've uninstalled the Switch Proxy extension, but the problem still exists. What's weird, is that I'd swear that it has only cropped up within the last few days or so... I was using the Switch Proxy extension, the browser was having fits, and then I removed it. I've also implemented the fixes detailed at the Secret of Firefox 1.0 article at windowssecrets. I've added the one for the memory paging size and placed my FF browser cache on my secondary HDD.

Windows 2000 patched out the wazoo
256 RAM
AMD Athlon 2600
FF 1.0

Other things I've noticed, FF is a damned memory hog! It will gobble and gobble up memory and never release it. If I minimize the window and then restore it, it's fine for a little while.

I was really digging FF and I'd like to get this resolved. But, I can tell you that if I can't get this issued resolved with a minimum (read: typical AOL user skill level) of effort, then I will not be able, in good conscience, to recommend FF to my less-than-computer-savvy family members. Or, anyone else for that matter.

Thank you very much for your assistance,
Jake
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