Firefox Consuming Massive Amounts of Memory (Windows 7)

My first time posting in this section and don't know what info you guys need to help. I'm running on Windows 7. Using the latest version of Firefox. Lately, it has been using tons of memory and causing my fan to run and the machine to get hot. I tried a few things like disabling Adblock Plus (which is a must use program) but it didn't seem to work. Actually, it got much worse. This is a screenshot of how much memory it was using. Which is insane to me. Before, it was around 450k, which still seems way too high.

http://i.imgur.com/XS6gsMl.jpg?1

This is the specs of my laptop:

http://i.imgur.com/RyNio7Q.jpg

 

What site are you viewing in Firefox? Besides this one.

 

Have you tried running FF with no addons?

From Google -

Launch Mozilla Firefox, click the "Firefox" button, click the small arrowhead next to "Help" and click "Restart with Add-Ons Disabled" in the submenu. Click the "Restart" button to confirm the action and restart Mozilla Firefox. Click the "Start in Safe Mode" button to start Mozilla Firefox without the add-ons.

 

I view many sites in Firefox. It's my browser of choice. Quite a few message boards. Amazon. I pay my credit cards online. Check email. Just basic stuff like that. Youtube.

While doing a little research, I see AdBlocker Plus can consume a lot of memory in Firefox. Something about it creating a separate log for each site you visit and it can cause the memory to keep expanding. I can do without the other add ons but this one I do enjoy. Keeps all these webpages less cluttered and less intrusive with all these ads popping up in my face. And I know it's how they receive revenue but it's my preference.

My browser before this was Chrome and it acted the same way. Seemed very clunky and bogged down.

I tried Opera and while slimmer, just was not up to par in various aspects. Many sites I went to didn't really even support Opera. My banking site didn't.

 

I'm not asking you to change your browsing setup permanently, just to try it now to check whether this is down to one or more of your addons. If memory usage goes down to normal when running with no addons we can then start testing to establish which addon is the problem.

 

I was asking which sites you were visiting when you saw that ram usage. That isn't unreasonable on some sites (which are actually web apps).

 

Gotcha. Ummm at that particular time, I think I had a message board I frequent open. I've never seen it reach that level, though. Maybe it was just a one time thing.

In safe mode, this is what it now looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/3ABTsRF.jpg?1

 

Hmm, that sounds like Earthling might be on to something and its actually an extension you have. Is flash disabled in Safe Mode? That could account for it too.

 

Little update: Went right back up. even in safe mode. And now a different process called plugin container pops up. It's very annoying.

Seems like everything is disabled in safe mode. All my extensions and add ons

http://i.imgur.com/pl7q5n2.jpg?1

 

That confirms that it's an addon. You now need to start FF normally (all your addons will be re-enabled) and then manually disable all extensions except the first. Restart FF, check memory usage. If it's still in normal range (<500MB) repeat that for the second addon and so on.

 

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/k...tic-connections#w_speculative-pre-connections

Just some food for thought. I don't install Adobe Flash or Oracle Java. Even noaa.gov has html5 viewing available for satellite loops. I would save bookmarks, nuke and reinstall. Just hope it isn't something nefarious.

 

Have you tried asking the question at the Mozilla/Firefox support forum/s ?...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions
Probably not related, but one thing I have found helpful is limiting the 'web content' cache size at Tools/Options/Advanced/Network/CachedWebContent.

Ps: You may also need to add a small fan next to your LT, helps here.
:-o

 

Switch from AdBlock to uBlock Origin, that should gain you some memory.

Plugin containers are for things like Flash/Java etc. - quite normal for a Mozilla based browser (but avoid - uninstall - Java unless you're sure you really must use it, similar for Flash but more sites still stick to it).

How many tabs do you have open at any one time + how long are your Firefox sessions?

Have you tried checking about:memory to see if there are any sites that are using too much memory?