Firefox 52 Slow and Sluggish

[Drizzy]

Seems like the last few Firefox builds (49-52?) are prone to performance slow-downs over time. My wife and I, using separate PCs with different add-ons, are both experiencing the same issue. We both use multiple tabs via Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager. We both have anywhere from 50 to 100 tabs displayed (not necessarily open) at any time. This never used to be a problem, but maybe Firefox changed their memory mgmt protocols of late?

When we open a session with multiple tabs, Firefox works fine for a while (15-30-45 minutes perhaps) but then starts getting slower and slower, until finally (1-2-3 hrs) it's simply unusable -- takes 20-30 seconds for a mouse click event, etc.. And finally, when it simply doesn't work, Firefox often just crashes with the bug screen. What's interesting is that, even though Firefox crashes, Windows 7 still shows it as an ACTIVE PROGRAM in Task Manager Processes. We have to manually "end process" (end firefox.exe in Task Manager).

Typically, Firefox exhibits this behavior with 500MB-2GB of DRAM allocated to Firefox. Both our PCs have 16GB or DRAM. Yes, we tried clearing all caches (CCleaner, etc.), using multiple virus scans, etc..

Suggestions?

Operating System
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 4690K @ 3.50GHz 28 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASRock H97 Pro4 (CPUSocket) 25 °C
Graphics
ASUS VH236H (1920x1080@59Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (ASRock)
Storage
476GB Crucial_CT512MX100SSD1 ATA Device (SSD) 27 °C
Optical Drives
ASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA Device
Audio
Intel Display Audio

[DanRaisch]

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

[Drizzy]

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

I re-loaded Firefox in Safe Mode and browsed for the last 2-3 hours with around 50 open tabs. Yes, it got sluggish to the point of being unusable. Page load times became silly (30 seconds to load Google, some pages took over 60-90 seconds). Mouse clicks took forever for register. Similarly, mouse hovers did not trigger their targets for 20-30-60 seconds. This is how Firefox has been going for the last weeks and months.

As an experiment, I opened a second Firefox instance and opened 3 or 4 tabs (pages). Those page loads and mouse actions were also just as sluggish. I'm almost positive that, if left for another few hours, Firefox would have encountered the typical fatal error and died. I've seen this behavior on a regular basis for some weeks, perhaps months.

[malliz]

What AV are you using?

[Drizzy]

What AV are you using?

Operating System Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU Intel Core i5 4690K @ 3.50GHz 28 °C Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM 16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard ASRock H97 Pro4 (CPUSocket) 25 °C
Monitor ASUS VH236H (1920x1080@59Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (ASRock)
Storage 476GB Crucial_CT512MX100SSD1 ATA Device (SSD) 27 °C
Optical Drives ASUS DRW-24B1ST a ATA Device
Audio Intel Display Audio

[mightyglydd]

AV=Anti Virus ?
@It should be fast on that system.

[Drizzy]

AV=Anti Virus ?
@It should be fast on that system.

AVB Free Version, up to date.

[mightyglydd]

AVG?
Maybe others here use it, I don't, a quick search revealed this ...
https://support.avg.com/answers?id=906b0000000Dg6jAAC
Which led to this https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleV ... repair-AVG

@Presumably you have Windows Defender turned off.

[Drizzy]

OK thanks. I'll switch to Avast and see if that helps.

[mightyglydd]

If you're going that route I'd run the 'AVG Remover' first.

http://www.avg.com/us-en/utilities

[makaiguy]

FWIW - Using free version of AVG on my desktop here and not seeing this problem. But I seldom have more than ten-or-so tabs open at once.

[Zapfenzieher]

I'm having the same problem in 52.0 and I'm using Avira, not AVG. I experienced this very soon after upgrading to 52.0 and also 52.0.1. I didn't experience the same kind of slowdown in 51.0.

[DanRaisch]

Have you tried clearing any references to Firefox in Avira's permissions tables and then rebooting the system before testing Firefox again?

[impar]

With Firefox 52 had tree evenings of slowness when ~150 tabs open. Firefox was just slow to do anything. The parent process (main Firefox process) got stuck on 25-30% CPU use and parent process (1) and content processes (3) showed an abnormal low RAM use, ranging from ~250-450MB, usually goes to 1-1,5GB each, for that amount of tabs open.
Had to save the session and restart Firefox. This behaviour started with v52.
Tried changing from Skia to Cairo, since I had problem in XP with Skia, didnt solve it.

At home I use Windows Defender, Intel quad-core, 8GB RAM and W10 64bits, Firefox is also the 64bits version.

If it happens again thinking on trying the dev edition or going back to v51. v52 has something broken.

[Drizzy]

On my wife's problematic machine (Win 7, FF52, 64-bit), we made some changes and it seems to help (so far):

1.) Did a Firefox "Refresh" (Help > Troubleshoot > Refresh)
2.) Changed from AVG to Avira (and made sure Windows Defender was OFF)
3.) Did a registry clean (Wise Reg Cleaner)

I've not updated my own machine yet, and it remains problematic.