234473 - Download problem impairs performance

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect)

Description

[Danny Hutton]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

When downloading a file (or saving a graphic) using Firefox, there is a
noticable hesitation at the start of the download. This hesitation may be
lengthy if the download is large. Opening the Task manager under Windows XP, I
note that the memory use of Firefox rises as the download continues. At one
point, Firefox was using almost 200 MB. Once the download finished, RAM slowly
returned to the system.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open Windows Task Manager to see memory usage. Note the memory size
2.Open Firefox and find a sizable file to download
3.Right-click and save file to the desktop
4.Attempt to surf to another website while the file downloads
5.Notice the hesitation as the file starts to download. 
6.Control returns after some delay
7.Note the memory usage in the Task Manager as the download occurs

Actual Results:  
With many different file downloads from various sites, the hesitation was
persistent and the memory consumption consistently rose to greatly inflated sizes.

Expected Results:  
The download should start and then immediately return control to the browser.
The memory consumption should not have risen to 200 MB in any case.

Comment 1

[Ali Ebrahim]

Are there specific websites where you see this problem exhibit? Or is it just in
general on all websites?

Also, can you try to disable your virus scanning software and test again and see
if you're still seeing the same slowness?

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Firefox slowed down a lot when I downloaded 4 porn videos at once.  I don't use
virus-scanning software.

Comment 3

[Robert Parenton]

Dupe of 227260?

Comment 4

[Dan Brusca]

I have the same problem, but with Mozilla 1.6 (and indeed, all versions from 1.0).

Seems to be in some way connected to the download manager. If there's nothing in
the DM then there's no delay in starting the download, but the more itmes that
build up the slower it gets.

Trouble I have now is that there are so many items in the DM that it hangs
whenever I try and remove more than a few from the list.

Comment 5

[Ali Ebrahim]

Yeah, I see this too now. I was just trying to download 5 ISO images off a
server on the LAN at the same time, and Firefox was SLOW. It slowed down to a
crawl. But the problem seems distinct from bug 227260 because that has to do
with moving the cursor over the edge of the download manager window. Maybe its
related to bug 241916?

It's kinda hard to put a finger on where exactly the problem is (if there is
anything at all we can fix).

Comment 6

[Adam Zey]

I experienced this same problem as well; whenever a download was started in
Firefox 0.8 (on WinXP SP1), the browser would lock up completely for several
seconds when any download was started.

This problem went away completely when I upgraded to Firefox 0.9 via a clean
install.

Comment 7

[Ali Ebrahim]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I experienced this same problem as well; whenever a download was started in
> Firefox 0.8 (on WinXP SP1), the browser would lock up completely for several
> seconds when any download was started.
> 
> This problem went away completely when I upgraded to Firefox 0.9 via a clean
> install.

Jesse also reports he hasn't seen this problem for a long time either, and he'll
refile a better bug if he sees this again. I'm not seeing this myself either
anymore. Closing the bug for now.