233872 - Almost always 100% CPU usage from Firefox 0.8 and flash player graphic image

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Geoff Saulnier]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

Loading almost any page take the CPU usage to 100%, at least 99 of which is
attributed to firefox, and therefore page loading grinds almost to a halt.  If
the page has a lot of changing/movuing graphics (like those darned ads!!!), the
CPU usage remains around 100%.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Load any page - watch your taskmanager
2.  Load a page with moving graphics (try http://macsurfer.com) and see CPU stay
high
3.

Actual Results:  
CPU usage thru the roof

Expected Results:  
CPU Usage should remain sane!


This bug is not apparent under Windows 2000, Solaris 2.8 or MacOS X - only under
NT for me.  (Don't have linux to test...).

Comment 1

[Ian McCall]

Also happening to me - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.6) 
Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8.

The machine I have is a dual-CPU, exact speed unknown (work machine, no CPU 
model reportage but probably ~450Mhz), 512Mb but with more than 300Mb free at 
the time. Firefox 0.8 always maxes out a CPUs when rendering, unfortunately 
making the program unusable on this platform.

Extensions installed: AdBlock, Flash Click to Run, Nuke Image. However, the 
behaviour is the same with all these uninstalled or disabled.

Firefox 0.8 is working fine for me on an XP box running at 2.4Ghz.

Comment 2

[Travis Chase]

Possible dupe of bug # 233518

Comment 3

[Tom Metro]

I've been observing the same or a related problem, likewise on NT:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

but in my case the browser behaves normally initially, and only after some
period of usage does it start pegging the CPU. Back when I was running Firebird
0.7, the threshold seemed to be when the virtual memory footprint exceeded 150
MB. Lately it seems to be happening much sooner. It may be linked to the number
of page loads rather than VM footprint.

Comment 4

[u63580]

Is this OS specific?  It is WFM with FF 20040530

Comment 5

[Ian McCall]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Is this OS specific?  It is WFM with FF 20040530

Yes - works for me on XP and OS X. Just NT4 I have the hassle with.

Comment 6

[Robin Monks]

I agree that it is related to bug 233518 .  Mainly becuase the credits dialogue
is renderend from, basicaly, a web page.  That bug also hase more info.

Reporter, if you think this was done in error please REOPEN.

Thanks

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 233518 ***

Comment 7

[Tom Metro]

> I agree that it is related to bug 233518.  Mainly becuase the credits dialogue
> is renderend from, basicaly, a web page.  That bug also hase more info.

They may share a common underlying cause, though bug 233518 might get resolved
by simply eliminating the animation on the credits screen, which would leave the
problem described in this bug report unresolved. I think they are sufficiently
distinct symptoms to warrant tracking them independently, so I recommend
reopening this bug.

And BTW, the intermittent occurrence of this problem that I reported in comment
#3 persists with:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040310 Firefox/0.8.0+

(I haven't tried 0.9 yet due to reports of instability.)

I'll also add that any session in which the history side-bar is opened (with a
large history - about 5 MB) will cause this bug to appear more quickly. Though
it still may require hundreds of tabs to be opened/pages viewed before it
occurs, so a trivial test case won't reproduce it.

Comment 8

[Robin Monks]

REOPENING...

Comment 9

[Horst Tebbe]

this is a persistent bug.  I have had this problem with Mozilla 1.4 and Firefox
0.8, 0.9, and 0.9.1 using Wxp Pro and W2K Server.

I love this browser, but I cannot use it since it eats up all of my machine.

It usually takes browsing thru a couple of URLs before this happens, but then it
locks up all available cpu cycles even if I am not asking the browser to do
anything.  In my current session, this has been the case for more than 3 hours.

At the moment, I am using a 900 Mhz P3 with 512MB, but it also happens with my
2.3Ghz P4 with 1GB of memory. 

Comment 10

[William Bumgarner [:zsinj]]

WFM WinXP Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a6)
Gecko/20050107 Firefox/1.0+

Reporter needs to close this bug if it not longer exists with v1.0

Comment 11

[Geoff Saulnier]

No longer use NT anywhere - all XP or Win2K now - so this bug is no longer an issue for me.

I'll close it as fixed.

G.

Comment 12

[Tom Metro]

(In reply to comment #11)
> No longer use NT anywhere...so this bug is no longer an issue for me.

The problem as I described in comment #3 and comment #7 (which may not be
identical to the original reporter's problem) still persists on NT with FireFox
1.0. As previously noted, the problem is observed only after hundreds of pages
have been viewed and the memory footprint has grown to well in excess of 100 MB.

My impression is that the thresholds at which the problem occurs have increased
with 1.0. I recently had a FireFox session that took up about 300 MB of RAM
before the problem was observed.

Although I use FireFox on other platforms, I don't stress it to the same extent
elsewhere, so I can't say whether the problem is NT specific.

I'd like to request that the bug be reopened, unless the conditions I described
in the above referenced comments don't reflect the original problem. In which
case I'll open up a separate report.

Comment 13

[William Bumgarner [:zsinj]]

This bug report originally dealt with resources being consumed due to viewing
graphics/animation intensive webpages, not necessarily the browser cashe filling
up. I suggest opening a new report for your situation.

The worst that could happen is that it be marked a duplicate of another bug, in
which case we'll know that it is still ocurring and needs to be kept an eye on.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Geoff in comment #11:
> No longer use NT anywhere - all XP or Win2K now - so this bug is no longer an
> issue for me.
> 
> I'll close it as fixed.

I don't think FIXED is an appropriate resolution for comment 11, and wbzsinj probably should not have verified the closing without comment based on what was presented. At best it would be WORKSFORME.  See the definition of FIXED and WORKSFORME at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status  It is also appropriate to cite the version of FF if you think the problem is gone.

But the problem as described in comment 0 for http://macsurfer.com/ is related to if not entirely flash player and continues today, although not as severely due to improvements in the plugin.  on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061128 Minefield/3.0a1 cpu varies between 0 and 50%

This can probably be duped to one of the flash bugs, but reopening and leaving open at the moment pending other comments

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The only URL cited in the bug - http://macsurfer.com/ - WFM with flash player NPSWF32.dll 9.0 r60 and Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a5pre) Gecko/20070530 Minefield/3.0a5pre.  Settles in at 1% CPU

please reopen with URLs, etc if you see this problem with recently updated flash player, v9.0 r60 or higher, tested on trunk build.

Comment 16

[jd]

This problem is so bad that it is a "deal-breaker".  It renders Firefox totally unuseable within a few minutes of opening and with only window/tab open with no ongoing updates or downloads and without any gif's, Google calenders or any of the other specifics associated in some other bug reports on this issue.  The problem has existed for as long as I can remember (Phoenix 0.8 was my first experience but I don't remember the problem with it).  I know that it has been around since Firefox 1.0 and it has gotten noticeably worse with each release since then.  As of version 2.0, it is 99% unuseable.  The Ook Video downloader is the ONLY reason I have not simply uninstalled Firefox and launched my own counter-evangelism campaign.  Yes, this persistently worsening problem really has made me that frustrated over the years.

This bug has existed in every XP machine that I have seen - four of mine and five belonging to friends.  This one has NEVER been "fixed".  It only gets worse and it does not require Flash, or anything else, to trigger it - it is simply the most dominant characteristic of every Firefox release since 1.0, if not earlier.

Comment 17

[u63580]

(In reply to comment #16)
> This problem is so bad that it is a "deal-breaker".  It renders Firefox totally
> unuseable within a few minutes of opening and with only window/tab open with no
> ongoing updates or downloads and without any gif's, Google calenders or any of
> the other specifics associated in some other bug reports on this issue.  The
> problem has existed for as long as I can remember (Phoenix 0.8 was my first
> experience but I don't remember the problem with it).  I know that it has been
> around since Firefox 1.0 and it has gotten noticeably worse with each release
> since then.  As of version 2.0, it is 99% unuseable.  The Ook Video downloader
> is the ONLY reason I have not simply uninstalled Firefox and launched my own
> counter-evangelism campaign.  Yes, this persistently worsening problem really
> has made me that frustrated over the years.
> 
> This bug has existed in every XP machine that I have seen - four of mine and
> five belonging to friends.  This one has NEVER been "fixed".  It only gets
> worse and it does not require Flash, or anything else, to trigger it - it is
> simply the most dominant characteristic of every Firefox release since 1.0, if
> not earlier.
> 

Sorry you feel like that, but unfortunately there is not a single bug causing the massive slowdown you describe on all WinXP system.  If there were, then the developers would have to fix it.  Like most people, I have no problems on XP.

Joseph

Comment 18

[Tom Metro]

(In reply to comment #16)
> This problem is so bad that it is a "deal-breaker".

Agreed. On some platforms I've relegated FF to being a "backup" browser that only gets limited use.


> It renders Firefox totally unuseable within a few minutes
> of opening and with only window/tab open with no ongoing
> updates or downloads and without any gif's, Google calenders
> or any of the other specifics associated in some other bug
> reports on this issue.

As the various "high CPU usage" bugs get closed out, I think you'll need to open a new bug that describes the unique conditions you are experiencing.

I've documented the symptoms I've observed and my theory as to what is causing it here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=266627#c34

but plan to open a new ticket for this at some point, as the symptoms I've seen don't exactly match any existing bug report. However, I suspect what I'm observing is a contributing factor to many of these other bugs.

Your description sounds quite close to what I've observed, but not quite. (The slowness I observe generally doesn't occur instantly after startup of the browser. It generally occurs after some period of use and growth of the memory footprint.)

I'll add comments to this and Bug 266627 referencing the new bug if/when I create it.


> I know that it has been around since Firefox 1.0 and it has
> gotten noticeably worse with each release since then.

See my theory in the above comment. As the browser gets more complex, the memory requirements and fragmentation naturally gets worse, so inefficiencies in that area are going to be felt on slower, low memory systems.


> This bug has existed in every XP machine that I have seen...

It might be interesting to know the CPU speed and memory (both total and available) on these systems that are having problems. (This would be something good to report in a new bug, not here.)

 -Tom

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #18)
> (In reply to comment #16)
> > This problem is so bad that it is a "deal-breaker".
> 
> Agreed. On some platforms I've relegated FF to being a "backup" browser that
> only gets limited use.
> 
>...
> > This bug has existed in every XP machine that I have seen...
> 
> It might be interesting to know the CPU speed and memory (both total and
> available) on these systems that are having problems. (This would be something
> good to report in a new bug, not here.)

further, it would be wise for new bugs of this type of issue be tested on and filed against trunk, not FF2. Much has changed on trunk in memory management, so for that reason and others filing against trunk will probably help get to the bottom of the issue much quicker.