Firefox Takes Ages To Fully Shutdown..?

Here's a curious thing I noticed with Firefox.

Over time it gradually hogs a lot more memory. It usually starts at around 180MB, but climbs over time to 400MB+.

Now my laptop often goes a week or so without a reboot (wow, I guess Windows did get better without us really noticing ). So I'm not sure how long it takes for that to happen.

When I close Firefox it disappears from view rapidly. But I've also watched it in task manager... where it slowly unloads itself, with memory used bouncing around (up and down) until it finally disappears - some 30 seconds or so later..!

Is this typical Firefox behaviour? Does Firefox not manage memory very well? Maybe I have a badly behaved Add-On?

 

Hello Mark...yes, Firefox does tend to be a resource hog at time...in fact, well documented with early versions of 3. Make sure you are using the most up to date version (3.6.3 right now) first off.

Next, you can test your bad Add-On theory by clicking Start --> All Programs --> Mozilla Firefox and select Mozilla Firefox Safe Mode. This will give you the opportunity to run Firefox with none of your normal Add-Ons. Use it that way for a while and test the performance and memory requirements...it should be better. If it is indeed much better, then you will need to start Firefox normally, click Tools --> Add Ons from the menus...disable ALL of your add-ons (except one) restart as instructed and slowly work through enabling them one at a time and testing the performance, and you will eventually find the one causing some issues.

Lastly, it can be awfully convenient to open lots of tabs. Make sure you close tabs you are no longer using and don't get too crazy with opening more than 10 or so tabs at a time.

Good luck.

 

Thanks Rick.

I'm using Firefox 3.6.3, so latest version. I use tabs a lot, but generally close tabs when finished.

Good advice there about diagnosing which add-on could potentially be causing issues. Although I don't think I can bear using Firefox without my Add-ons for long enough to get the answer.

Does Firefox behave like I'm seeing for other people?

 

Hello Mark. I hear you loud and clear...the add-ons to Firefox make it the best browser to use for me too...and I'm not saying you have to keep them all disabled, you just might be able to find out which one may be causing you an issue. And yes, Firefox does behave like this for most people. The memory usage has gotten better in the latest versions, but it (and Chrome) do gobble resources.

 

And it's normal for Firefox to take ~30 seconds to shut down? That's the bit that seems particularly odd to me.

 

I haven't checked myself, but that's why I want you to test sans all plug-ins to check performance.

 

OK.

Does anybody else see this behaviour on shutting down Firefox?