315932 - Repeatedly opening/closing browser consumes all available page file space

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[jaslone20]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

On Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1, if you repeatedly open and close Firefox throughout the day, Firefox continually consumes page file space until there is none left. This is especially true if you open multiple tabs each time (I do this as I check CNN.com). I have tried this with nothing running on the system except Firefox and can reproduce it each time. As you open and close the browser, if you check page file usage in the Task Manager, it grows exponentially each time Firefox is launched. Eventually, the OS reports "Virtual memory too low" errors and the system hangs. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Check the page file usage in Task Manager with no applications running.
2.Open and close Firefox several times (you do not have to actually visit any URLs to see the issue). You may wish to open several tabs each time.
3.Check the page file usage again in Task Manager. I have seen page file usage go from around 100MG to 1.2GB after launching Firefox 6 or 7 times.

Actual Results:  
My page file usage went from 140MB to 1.2GB with nothing running but Firefox.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should free the allocated space each time it is closed. I cannot tell if the browser should be releasing space each time a tab is closed or each time the browser is closed. 

I have no special themes or customization options installed. This occurs using Firefox with just the default setup. I also have not changed any of the available  options under the Tools, Options menu.

Comment 1

[Aaron Racine]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a6pre) Gecko/2007060204 Minefield/3.0a6pre

WFM.  My PF went back to the same size after re-starting my browser several times and loading cnn.com every time.

Reporter, are you still seeing this problem with the latest release of Firefox when using a clean profile?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

Comment 2

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

WFM as well. If you can still reproduce using Firefox 2.0.0.6 or later or using a trunk build and have tried using a clean profile (see comment 1), please comment in this bug.