254595 - all downloads extremely slow, no matter how small

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 159107

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, defect)

Description

[Alan Winston]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803

All downloads have been extremely slow, no matter how small
---
Using progress winddow, not download manager window.
---
Out of curiousity, switched setting to use download manager -- found download
manager window clogged with an extraordinary large amount of download history.
--
Tried removing download history by selecting all and clicking remove (using
german language interface, i'm sorry if my terms aren't precise for english
language interface) -- after a half hour nothing seemed to have happened,
although task manager reported mozilla using 95%-98% of cpu time. Shut down
mozilla, restarted system, tried removing just a few, but too slow.
---
Determined that a file named "downloads.rdf" was probably the database (almost
2,879 kb -- available at
http://www.geocities.com/albrwi/d2879/downloads_rdf.html) & moved it out of its
directory to a temporary subdirectory & restarted Mozilla -- Voila! fast
downloads again.
---


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Download a few thousand files, using progress window instead of download manager

Actual Results:  
Slower & slower downloads, until excrutiatingly slow 

Expected Results:  
maintained download performance

Conclusion: just because a user isn't using download manager doesn't mean they
can ignore it. Ouch -- it bit me badly.
---
Recommendation: default options to autoremove old records from downloads.rdf,
based on count/date ("keep 100 most recent", "keep 30 days")
---
Positive -- this will significantly reduce the frequency with which I switch to
IE to do downloads

Comment 1

[Hermann Schwab]

workaround:
When Mozilla isn´t running, delete downloads.rdf in your profile.
An empty file downloads.rdf will be recreated at next start.

Comment 2

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 159107 ***