Firefox keeps acting "tired" after a while

[umbrellabeach]

Asking this here because asking on Yahoo! Answers, of course, just got me insults and false accusations for no reason because people are idiots that should all go to hell in my humble opinion. (How long do I have to wait to delete my question? And why do I keep using that useless site full of scumbags? I want to shoot them all.)

Anyway, after a little while of use, Firefox starts lagging and taking a long time to load simple things - or refusing to load at all. When I exit and then reopen, it works better. Until, of course, it gets "tired" again. It's just started doing this recently, within the past week or so. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this could be happening and what I can do to fix it?

The guy who called me an "uneducated idiot" (he should really stop comparing me to himself) said I'm low on RAM. I checked and I have 6.00 GB. No idea what that means.

 

[King_Oni]

Most likely clear out the cache (memory) from your browser. If you restart you probably clear it out on default (and automatically) which means your cache is empty again.

I'm not the best on troubleshooting and how to fix it, but having your browsers memory full is why stuff usually loads slow. Perhaps this will at least point you towards a direction on where to look.

I'm not a user of firefox, so I wouldn't know, but maybe there's a option or button in there somewhere that says "clear cache" or "clear memory" or something along those lines, you can hit when you browse or experience slow loadtimes.

 

[Progster]

Firefox in general can be slow, and is known to use a lot of RAM (or so I've been told). It's one of its disadvantages.
Go to menu (three bars at top of page), then history, then select option "clear history" You can also set the browser not to remember the history in menu - private settings, or browse in a private tab by clicking "new Private Window" in menu.
Otherwise a cleanup with CCleaner might help.

 

[Harrison]

Asking this here because asking on Yahoo! Answers, of course, just got me insults and false accusations for no reason because people are idiots that should all go to hell in my humble opinion. (How long do I have to wait to delete my question? And why do I keep using that useless site full of scumbags? I want to shoot them all.)

Anyway, after a little while of use, Firefox starts lagging and taking a long time to load simple things - or refusing to load at all. When I exit and then reopen, it works better. Until, of course, it gets "tired" again. It's just started doing this recently, within the past week or so. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this could be happening and what I can do to fix it?

The guy who called me an "uneducated idiot" (he should really stop comparing me to himself) said I'm low on RAM. I checked and I have 6.00 GB. No idea what that means.

To clear your cache in Firefox....

1. From the History menu, select Clear Recent History. ...
2. From the Time range to clear: drop-down menu, select the desired range; to clear your entire cache, select Everything.
3. Next to "Details", click the down arrow to choose which elements of the history to clear; to clear your entire cache, select all items.

You might want to try the 'PaleMoon' browser. It's OpenSource and is based upon Firefox. Runs faster and neater and you can load your bookmarks directly from Firefox.

6Gb of RAM is plenty (unless you are doing something very bizarre)

 

[umbrellabeach]

To clear your cache in Firefox....

1. From the History menu, select Clear Recent History. ...
2. From the Time range to clear: drop-down menu, select the desired range; to clear your entire cache, select Everything.
3. Next to "Details", click the down arrow to choose which elements of the history to clear; to clear your entire cache, select all items.

You might want to try the 'PaleMoon' browser. It's OpenSource and is based upon Firefox. Runs faster and neater and you can load your bookmarks directly from Firefox.

6Gb of RAM is plenty (unless you are doing something very bizarre)

I cleared it and it seems to be running faster now. We'll see what happens when I've been using FF for a while with no refreshing...

 

[Judge]

I cleared it and it seems to be running faster now. We'll see what happens when I've been using FF for a while with no refreshing...

If you're using Windows, check your task manager (processes) to see how much memory Firefox is using, accessing only this one URL and thread. I always run a browser with the cache being cleared after every session.

 

[umbrellabeach]

If you're using Windows, check your task manager (processes) to see how much memory Firefox is using, accessing only this one URL and thread. I always run a browser with the cache being cleared after every session.

It's about 630,000, though it keeps changing.
Maybe it would be a good idea to manually clear the cache after every session too? Although I hate having to re-log in to all the sites I visit.

 

[King_Oni]

It's about 630,000, though it keeps changing.
Maybe it would be a good idea to manually clear the cache after every session too? Although I hate having to re-log in to all the sites I visit.

Don't confuse cache with cookies. Cache doesn't store your password and username.

 

[zurb]

Some things not mentioned by others yet:

What version of Windows/OS & Firefox are you using?
Have you installed any Firefox plugins recently?
Have you installed new software that might be hogging bandwidth or RAM?
How much space do you have free on your harddrive ( C: ) ?
Are there any automatic updates happening?
Have you picked up a virus or trojan by accident?

You can use Task Manager mentioned above to also check your bandwidth. If its going flat out, but firefox is slow, maybe something else is using the internet.
Task Manager will also show you if your physical RAM is fully used or pagefile going wild.

 

[Judge]

It's about 630,000, though it keeps changing.
Maybe it would be a good idea to manually clear the cache after every session too? Although I hate having to re-log in to all the sites I visit.

First purge your browser of everything. Then log back on and see in the task manager if that initial "processes" number if more manageable. In my task manager I'm running less than half that with two separate domains open in Firefox. It looks like something is really taking up memory on your system that shouldn't.

Once you've purged everything- including passwords, cold boot your computer and open up your browser to this domain only. Then open the task manager to see what Firefox shows in the "processes" tab. If it still shows 650,000K I'd say you have a problem.

You might also consider downloading freeware like Ccleaner. Which comprehensively clears out stuff left in resident memory. I do it frequently not only for computer maintenance, but also for security reasons. Sure it's a pain to have to retype passwords, but my passwords don't exist outside of resident memory.

If your task manager consistently shows that kind of memory used by your browser yet not accounted for, I can't help but wonder if your computer has been hijacked as a drone in someone's DDoS attack. Or maybe some kind of trojan horse issue.

 

[zurb]

If logging in regularly and passwords is a problem, I recommend installing Password Safe
Makes remembering passwords and logging in much easier.

 

[umbrellabeach]

First purge your browser of everything. Then log back on and see in the task manager if that initial "processes" number if more manageable. In my task manager I'm running less than half that with two separate domains open in Firefox. It looks like something is really taking up memory on your system that shouldn't.

Once you've purged everything- including passwords, cold boot your computer and open up your browser to this domain only. Then open the task manager to see what Firefox shows in the "processes" tab. If it still shows 650,000K I'd say you have a problem.

You might also consider downloading freeware like Ccleaner. Which comprehensively clears out stuff left in resident memory. I do it frequently not only for computer maintenance, but also for security reasons. Sure it's a pain to have to retype passwords, but my passwords don't exist outside of resident memory.

If your task manager consistently shows that kind of memory used by your browser yet not accounted for, I can't help but wonder if your computer has been hijacked as a drone in someone's DDoS attack. Or maybe some kind of trojan horse issue.

I just checked it again and it's about half of that now. 327,000-something. How much is normal?

Some things not mentioned by others yet:

What version of Windows/OS & Firefox are you using?
Have you installed any Firefox plugins recently?
Have you installed new software that might be hogging bandwidth or RAM?
How much space do you have free on your harddrive ( C: ) ?
Are there any automatic updates happening?
Have you picked up a virus or trojan by accident?

You can use Task Manager mentioned above to also check your bandwidth. If its going flat out, but firefox is slow, maybe something else is using the internet.
Task Manager will also show you if your physical RAM is fully used or pagefile going wild.

Windows 7
Not recently, though I do have a few - AdBlock Plus, Social Fixer, Swagbutton for Swagbucks, etc. Just ones I feel I really need.
I haven't installed any new software recently.
My hard drive has 268 GB of 465 GB free.
Last 2 questions - not sure. I did do a scan with Microsoft Essentials recently and it said my computer is fine.

 

[Judge]

I just checked it again and it's about half of that now. 327,000-something. How much is normal?

From my perspective, 327,000K sounds good. So I take it you purged your browser before getting down to 327,000K?

I just look it at like this. I'm using a VERY powerful quad-core CPU with more than adequate RAM with a decent broadband connection. These days, caching data in a browser doesn't give me any miraculous performance boosts as in the past. And as I already posted, I don't like hanging onto passwords beyond resident memory.

 

[umbrellabeach]

From my perspective, 327,000K sounds good. So I take it you purged your browser?

I just look it at like this. I'm using a VERY powerful quad-core CPU with more than adequate RAM with a decent broadband connection. These days, caching data in a browser doesn't give me any miraculous performance boosts as in the past. And as I already posted, I don't like hanging onto passwords beyond resident memory.

I suppose so. I cleared the cache with the directions in Harrison's post. I don't want to delete everything though. I have a lot of bookmarks.

 

[Judge]

I suppose so. I cleared the cache with the directions in Harrison's post. I don't want to delete everything though. I have a lot of bookmarks.

When you "sit" on a browser cache indefinitely (most users probably do) there's no telling what and how much you accumulate needlessly in terms of performance hits. Sounds like you had something in your cache that was automatically accessing a URL whether you wanted it or not.

Bookmarks is just a simple html file with Firefox. You don't want to purge that. In fact, I periodically export my browser bookmarks file elsewhere so I never lose it. Of course I don't purge everything. I do leave offline data and site preferences as well.

 

[wyverary]

Have you tried CCleaner? It has a lot of options for clearing out your cache and I've found it quite helpful in both Windows and OS X. (FWIW, I'm a Chrome user.)

 

[Judge]

Have you tried CCleaner? It has a lot of options for clearing out your cache and I've found it quite helpful in both Windows and OS X. (FWIW, I'm a Chrome user.)

I use CCleaner all the time. Especially in cleaning out the registry. Has never cause any problems. I'm a purge-aholic.

A freeware download...and to think of people who pay good money for similar products...

 

[AsheSkyler]

I had a copy of Firefox once that was downright lazy. Installed a different version and fixed it. Best I got that hasn't been covered by anybody else.

 

[qwerty]

Have you installed anything in the week?
It's probably a plug-in hogging resources

 

[umbrellabeach]

No, it's been a while since I've installed anything.
It's been running much better since I cleared my cache, although oddly it's still been taking up quite a bit of memory. Its average is in the 400,000s, depending on what I'm doing. If I'm on Facebook for a while it goes up. There was one time - I think it was a few days ago, when I was catching up on 2 days' worth of Facebook after having had very limited Internet access over the weekend - when it actually got up to a million. Still, its performance is better.
Now I wonder why it heats up whenever it wants to install updates, then cools down once they're installed...