271760 - Firefox constantly eats up memory and gets painful slow

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 249469

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Thomas Klinger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-DE; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-DE; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

When surfing a while through the web Firefox was getting slower and slower
specially when opening links in new windows. It grows the more the more graphics
you're viewing.
I investigated the problem and found that in the task manager I see that his
usage of memory is rapidly and constantly growing.
It could happen that Firefox then crashes or crashes when closing (sorry, no
protocol existing yet).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Firefox and brows for a while through the web (using sites with
intensive graphics usage)
2. Open the task manager parallel and focus on firefox.exe
3.

Actual Results:  
- You'll see that the usage of Firefox rapidly grows and grows. Simple websites
occupy 1-3 MB when loading (they have only text in it). 
- Firefox gets painful slow
- Firefox crashes after a while during usage or when closing


I'll add two screenshots of the taskmanager having only a view minutes between
them. The difference is more than 20MB.

Comment 1

[Thomas Klinger]

Attachment: Screenshot from 19:37

Comment 2

[Thomas Klinger]

Attachment: Screenshot from 19:48

Comment 3

[Thomas Klinger]

Attachment: Error message on closing Firefox

This error message appears from time to time when closing it. I think it might
be depending on my case here. I'm no programmer so I cannot say that definetly.
I thought it might be worth to attach that one, maybe it gives you a clue.
Sorry about the german language but I think the registers are recognizeable.

Comment 4

[fxfmember]

TO CONFIRM, I also have been experiencing this problem.  Adding to Thomas'
comments, 

  - I'm running Firefox v1.0.0.0 (not sure which build, but downloaded Nov 26th), 
    on a Windows 2000 box with 256 MB of memory
  - I have uninstalled all plug-ins and extensions to confirm the bug exists on a 
    'vanilla' install.  Note: I have several LiveLinks (links to RSS feeds) on my 
    Bookmarks Toolbar Folder
  - When Firefox first starts, memory usage is about 20 Meg.  The memory usage 
    increases with each new page opened, but browsing mostly text sites w/only 
    one tab open, it rarely climbs above 60 Meg.
  - HOWEVER, when browsing graphic-intensive sites (e.g. picture galleries), 
    the memory usage increases dramatically.  The problem is exacerbated when 
    medium- to large-sized files are downloaded simultaneously (using the native 
    download manager).  When Firefox memory usage reaches above 160 Meg or so, 
    the entire system becomes sluggish, presumably because the system is running 
    out of free RAM and is starting to work off the disk cache.  Eventually, the 
    browser locks up ("Not Responding") and I have to kill it.
  - Interestingly, if I start viewing mostly-text sites before the browser locks 
    up, the memory usage drops below 60 Meg after a few minutes.

I am willing to install more RAM, but would like some assurance that there is a
reasonable upper limit to Firefox' memory usage.  Otherwise, it would make more
sense for me to switch to a less resource-intensive browser.  I really like the
user-extendability features of Firefox though, and would prefer to make it my
new primary browser, if this performance/resource issue could be resolved.

Comment 5

[fxfmember]

BTW, I just tried the overnight build for Mozilla (Nov 28, 2004), and determined
that it does NOT exhibit this bug.  Overall memory utilization is lower as well,
under 40M under the same conditions as the Firefox case above.

I'll use Mozilla as my primary browser for now, even though I much prefer
Firefox' features.  Hopefully the same extensions will work on both... I'd like
to switch to Firefox once this bug is resolved.

Comment 6

[Ryuichi KUBUKI]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 249469 ***