How to disable plugin-container.exe

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LoudNoise
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by LoudNoise »

But explain this to me, most flash videos like youtube worked fine, but certain sites, like tgwtg would have the video just freeze after the FF upgrade, with the sound continuing for up to a minute before the video caught up;

Yes. Did you try my solution?
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Jose_Lisbon
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by Jose_Lisbon »

Hi.
When I watch a YouTube video FF and plugin-container eat away 60% of my CPU (IE will only use about 40%).
I've read in the first page of this thread on how do disable it, but I have one question: I use Online Armor Firewall. If I set it to "block" Plugin-container will the result be the same?

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Jose.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by patrickjdempsey »

1. IE is built into Windows. So you therefore cannot compare CPU or memory use between Firefox and IE.

2. If you block plugin-container from access to the internet, then you effectively block whatever plugin is attempting to access the internet from having that access.... which means that Flash-based videos will not load and Java-based interactive UI's will not work properly. In previous versions of Firefox (as well as every other browser) these plugins are *always* given internet access, therefore you are not losing anything by granting at access.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by satyr »

patrickjdempsey wrote:In previous versions of Firefox (as well as every other browser) these plugins are *always* given internet access, therefore you are not losing anything by granting at access.


Just a further clarification: "... these plugins are *always* given internet access because they are considered (by the firewall) to be a parf of the program itself. The only difference now is that they are *isolated* in their own process (i.e. "plugin-container.exe")."

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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by AluminumHaste »

You say it's not a resource hog, but experience dictates otherwise. I used to be able to watch 720p content on my POS computer at work, now it skips like crazy and seeing as I never really had crashing issues with FF before, I don't see the point of this "feature".
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by deblm »

I ran some benchmarks, with Flash Benchmark 2008 from Snails animation. On Windows XP SP3, Firefox 3.6.8.
25.39 fps with plugin-container (oopp) turned off, 2nd round
22.9 fps with plugin-container (oopp) turned on, 2nd round
So, turning on plugin container made about a 10% slowing on that benchmark. If your system is just barely able to play HD video, or a certain resolution of video, disabling the plugin-container may give you enough of a boost to help.
For most people, reducing crashes will be worth a slight slowdown in flash, but hopefully performance can be improved in the future. Also, by making flash slower, it may be possible that the separate process for plugins is making the responsiveness of the rest of the browser better, by prioritizing the browser more over flash. If you really want the crash protection and want to experiment with improving flash performance, you could try setting the plugin-container to higher process priority - a utility like Prio - Process Priority Saver http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html may let you do that.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by satyr »

deblm wrote:If you really want the crash protection and want to experiment with improving flash performance, you could try setting the plugin-container to higher process priority - a utility like Prio - Process Priority Saver http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html may let you do that.


Actually, it's the opposite: setting the "plugin-container.exe" to a higher process priority will not improve the Flash performance since CPU priorities are relative and not absolute (see this thread that I've created on Ars Technica forums for details), while lowering the "plugin-container.exe" process'ss priority will/might help the OS to responsive better!
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by deblm »

I do agree that reducing the priority of plugin-container may make the rest of the computer more responsive.
But even considering that process priorities are relative, I don't see why increasing the priority of the flash plugin would not cause it to get more CPU cycles and run faster, at the expense of other things (like the rest of the browser) running in the background. When computers were much slower, I believe Winamp ran at higher priority in order to reduce hiccups.
That thread argues that changing priorities is not a magic bullet to make the computer faster.
The proof will be in the results, but I think that increasing the priority of a process can make that process get a higher percentage of cpu cycles.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by patrickjdempsey »

AluminumHaste wrote:You say it's not a resource hog, but experience dictates otherwise. I used to be able to watch 720p content on my POS computer at work, now it skips like crazy and seeing as I never really had crashing issues with FF before, I don't see the point of this "feature".


And how many other factors have changed in the time between "I used to be able to"? Has flash updated? More than likely yes. Has Java updated... more than likely yes. Hmmm. So how do you know which is causing your problems? Good luck figuring that out. Obviously something isn't working right... maybe it is Firefox... maybe it is Flash. I honestly don't know which it is... but neither you do... and jumping to the conclusion that it's Firefox and complaining about it on a user's forum doesn't help anyone.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by Guest »

does anyone knows how to disable this on minefield versions? i can't find the preference in the about:config page

you can support this change in whatever way you want, try blaming flash and whatnot but i find it hard to believe its flash fault when the videos run smoothly when the container is DEactived on my old pc and it doesn't when its on...
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by st4rdog »

Adding my support to get rid of this.

I just updated to a version of FF that includes this. It takes up a ton of memory, and I don't like seeing it in my processes list.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by LoudNoise »

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The instructions for turning this off are located in a zillion (and counting) Try here: viewtopic.php?p=9530495#p9530495
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by Bluefang »

... but i find it hard to believe its flash fault when the videos run smoothly when the container is DEactived on my old pc and it doesn't when its on...

No, it's not completely Flashes fault. This crash protection/sandbox does introduce an intermediary between Flash and the browser, which has a more noticeable impact on lower performance PCs. Google's Chrome also has poor performance with Flash.

However, it should be noted that Flash 10.1 has been known to have problems with the plugin-container, and that's due to something changed in Flash.

It takes up a ton of memory

The the plugin-container.exe uses more memory than running plugins in-process, but it is an insignificant amount (a few MB).
viewtopic.php?p=9555167#p9555167

... and I don't like seeing it in my processes list.

Sorry, but that's the worst argument I've seen for getting rid of this. My suggestion would be to not camp out in the task manager.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by patrickjdempsey »

It's amazing how many people are bothered by a process they know is Firefox but readily accept the dozen or more svchost processes running god-knows-what.
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Re: How to disable plugin-container.exe

Post by lamenerds »

Man, the arrogance of some of the know-it-alls on here is breathtaking. Here's what I know: before disabling this my computer did not work. I was pricing a new computer. Since disabling it: computer works as well as it used to. From completely unusable even when firefox was closed to perfectly fine. Clearly, I'm no computer nerd. However, this IS my experience and obviously many others are experiencing the same thing. Frankly, this issue combinmed with the over the top d!ick headedness of some of the 'respected' posters on this board have me shopping for a new browser.
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