Major Problem with Firefox

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
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Frank Lion
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Frank Lion »

dmcmillen wrote: You are not being helpful to this conversation. We are all looking for solutions.
No, you're not.
Eldkatten wrote: And as a user, I find it quite annoying not to have a certain solution, but to be expected to try this, and that, and maybe that as well. Frankly speaking, before I spend days and weeks on observing memory issues with Firefox, only to find out "Oh, THAT setting didn't do the trick either."
Too bad, I don't give a damn what you find quite annoying. You come here for help and the first thing you'll be offered are our recognised troubleshooting steps.

One of those steps is to create a new additional testing profile as part of our problem elimination procedures. This step takes less than 5 minutes to perform. I know this, because I wrote the article on it -

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_ne ... on_Windows

Up to you, but either help us to help you or this thread will be locked and you will go elsewhere.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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Eldkatten
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Eldkatten »

Dear Frank Lion,

please note that I am not the starter of this thread, so blocking it would be unfair to the person who actually did. If you feel the need for punishing someone, block me or the thread I started (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3039679).

But please also note that I did try the steps you and others suggested, here and in the other threads dealing with a memory problem of some kind. Both the starter of this thread and I have given their respective opinions, though, to the "new profile" solution, which is not one, in our opinion, because profiles are a way to organize work and usually a lot of time and work is put into a personal working profile.
Though, of course, as a first step to isolate the actual problem it is ok.

And, maybe you didn't notice, put aside my thoughts about "Bug" or "Support", I did test some things as suggested and I did give some feedback about the effects.

Could we please just calm down again, everyone? I know most of you are trying to help.

Have a nice day
dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

I am the starter of this thread and I would prefer it not be locked. That, like the anger I see being demonstrated here, is not in any way useful to finding a solution. And yes, I appreciate all constructive input. That is why we go to forums for solutions or answers to questions, hoping to get input that we may not have thought of or information that we don't know. That said, I am always cautious of input similar to a common suggestion that I see all the time on Windows forums: "Have you tried reinstalling Windows" A quite simple sentence but an extremely drastic solution.

When I have time I will play around with a test profile and or disabling all extensions. I am not opposed to trying things to see if I can isolate the problem. The issue, of course, is that I currently cannot reproduce the problem in my current environment with any level of confidence. I have not yet figured out what triggers the runaway memory consumption. It does not always happen. This creates a troubleshooting dilemma in that I can never really be sure if I have isolated the cause. Just because I create another profile and test there and the problem does not occur does NOT mean that I have isolated the problem to a profile issue. Likewise for extensions. Until I know that I can easily reproduce the problem with surety, only then can I really have confidence in the test results from other environments.
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Grumpus
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Grumpus »

@dmcmillen - what doesn't appear right is the five or so Firefox.exe files showing in the resource table unless you are paralleling five open browsers.
This alone would be an issue.
Some of the links you posted were less than proper in the html or xhtml or what they were written in but for the most part didn't seem to be an issue.
You should, before doing anything, create a new profile.
You should also, once Firefox is open, type "about:profiles" in the nav text entry to see what's there.
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dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

what doesn't appear right is the five or so Firefox.exe files showing in the resource table unless you are paralleling five open browsers.
This alone would be an issue.
Grumpus, First of there was only one instance of FF running. Are you saying there should only be one firefox.exe process running?? There have always been multiple firefox.exe processes running when I have FF up. Right now I have 3 tabls and there are 6 firefox.exe processes.
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mightyglydd
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by mightyglydd »

Grumpus wrote:what doesn't appear right is the five or so Firefox.exe files showing in the resource table unless you are paralleling five open browsers.
WTFrak are you talking about ](*,) ..it's a called multiprocess a FIREFOX FEATURE or electrolysis, currently I see six......
#KeepFightingMichael and Alex.
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

dmcmillen wrote:Just because I create another profile and test there and the problem does not occur does NOT mean that I have isolated the problem to a profile issue.

Not a guarantee but most likely. Profiles can and do get corrupted
dmcmillen wrote:This is a major problem. Is FF is aware of this and if so is there a fix or eminent release to fix the problem. I have been a FF user for many years, but at this point I have absolutely no trust in using FF.
There are millions of FF users and if this were an actual FF problem this forum would be flooded and it isn't. Actually been kind of quite around here for the last few months. NOTE, we are not Mozilla; we are a user support community.

Problems with FF are usually traced to a corrupted profile or a settings issue.

On the other hand I "think" based on your UA you are on Win 7 (not sure since I'm not a Win person). If that is so it is a 9 year old OS which, while FF supports it, I'm surprised it still is out there.

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dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

Problems with FF are usually traced to a corrupted profile or a settings issue.
That information helps explain why people are suggesting trying a new profile. However, what I was trying to say is that if I cannot reliably reproduce the problem in my current profile and can go days without a problem, then at what point would I be able to declare the problem is a profile issue. I understand that troubleshooting is a process of elimination but that assumes we have enough knowledge to know that we have eliminated something.

So lets say it turns out to be a profile problem, how to I migrate all my information from my current profile to the new profile?
On the other hand I "think" based on your UA you are on Win 7 (not sure since I'm not a Win person). If that is so it is a 9 year old OS which, while FF supports it, I'm surprised it still is out there.
Yes, I am a Win 7 user on this machine, Win 10 on my laptop. And there are hundreds of thousands of users still running Win 7. Many Win users did not upgrade to vista or 8 because of problems with those OSs, which is why there are still a lot of win 7 users out there, and a lot of them running FF. While an old OS, MS plans on supporting at least through 2020. Win 10 is MS's OS for all platforms.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by DanRaisch »

Win Vista came before Win 7, not that that has any bearing on your Firefox issues.

See this article for information on migrating data from an old profile to a new -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... _-_Firefox
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

dmcmillen wrote:So lets say it turns out to be a profile problem, how to I migrate all my information from my current profile to the new profile?
That is simple. You can move your bookmarks, history, favicons, and passwords by copying four files from your old to new profile.

As far as extensions I always recommend reinstalling them one at a time and then testing.

Other settings I personalty take screen shots of them and redo them in the new profile.

Anything else I just "fix" as I browse.

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dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

Win Vista came before Win 7, not that that has any bearing on your Firefox issues.
You're right of course. I hope I don't have to do anything important today. Can't seem to get the brain in the right gear.
Kevin McFarlane
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Kevin McFarlane »

RobertJ wrote: On the other hand I "think" based on your UA you are on Win 7 (not sure since I'm not a Win person). If that is so it is a 9 year old OS which, while FF supports it, I'm surprised it still is out there.

.
It's supported because it has a huge market share, still more than Windows 10. I suspect that Microsoft may have another XP problem on their hand, i.e., businesses reluctant to upgrade.
Brummelchen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Brummelchen »

@RobertJ, the crash-rep pointed out that his used win7 is up to date with patches.
his sproblem resists in windows 7 or its used software, but not firefox. he should go to a windows forum to get windows analysed. as i wrote before my firefox x64 on win7/64 do not have any issue with salon.com in any way. (and not on win7/x86 and not on win8/10)
dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

@RobertJ, the crash-rep pointed out that his used win7 is up to date with patches.
his sproblem resists in windows 7 or its used software, but not firefox. he should go to a windows forum to get windows analysed. as i wrote before my firefox x64 on win7/64 do not have any issue with salon.com in any way. (and not on win7/x86 and not on win8/10)
I strongly doubt this is a windows problem. It is a firefox.exe process that is out of control, not a windows process. It could be a change in windows that affects calls that firefox is making to windows, but even given the unlikeliness of that scenario, it is still a FF problem.

Also, if I create a new profile, could you please tell me what files to copy over to the new profile to get my bookmarks, settings, add-ons, browser history, etc in the new profile. I will probably not copy the add-ons over initially until I can test. I see where the current default profile directory is and there are a lot of subdirectories.
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Grumpus
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Grumpus »

@dmcmillen & mightyglydd - The resource meter used on this system shows the actual process, not just a general Firefox listing.
Eight cores and 4 processes - showing what, how much and real time changes. The actual use allocation and it can be defined further.
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