551381 - frequent Firefox SUCKS CPU, system resources, FREEZES, HANGS

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[jonkit]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

Firefox has "Mozilla Firefox" approved addons
ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THIS SEVERAL VERSIONS OLD PROBLEM ?
Do we need a different browser ?
Firefox Sucks CPU
Firefox Sucks system resources
Firefox FREEZES, HANGS, FAILS to RESPOND
How many hundreds (thousands ?) of complaints about this problem will it take before you FIX this FAILURE ?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start Firefox browser
2.Try to browse (1 tab, 10 tabs no diff)
3.Frequently, not always, FF sucks CPU, system resources

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Um, I'm sorry, but you are going to have to provide a lot more information for us to be able to figure out what is going on. Does this happen in a new clean profile, http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles. What websites show this reliably? Are all your plugins (flash, quicktime, java) updated to the latest version found on their developer's websites? How much is a lot? What are specific numbers you are seeing.

Comment 2

[rob cain]

Please allow me to add some info, to this ticket, rather than add a new ticket of my own.

I am using:
 
 - FF 3.6.2 (though this problem first appeared in the previous version, irrc).
 - I have removed ALL 3rd party and Mozilla plugins from FF.
 - I have cleared all history and cache and set my history to 5 days only.
 - Windows Vista - Home Premium 
 - Intel Core2 Duo CPU - T5750 @ 2GHz
 - 3GB RAM
 - have no other desktop applications running - only FF
 - ZoneAlarm and AGV running in the background.

I open several browser windowes, each with several tabs open. doesnt matter much what sites, same problem. though heavy flash or javascript make it worse.

After a period of appoximately 1 hour or so (varies) - I can GUARANTEE that:

 - a single instance of the FF browser will be consuming in excess of 50% of my CPU. more usually its up between 60-80%, constant!!

 - FF and Windows performance degrades, untill totally unresponsive - noticed first within drop down menu's, etc on FF. affects windows desktop repainting, etc. totally unusable, though control-key commands work slightly longer (thankfuly). eventually, they also hang.

Only solution, is to CTRL_ALT_DEL, go to Windows Task Manager, and physically kill off the process thread. You can see it eating up cpu! 

This problem is posted all over the WWW.

Seems like you guys have something SERIOUSLY WRONG wityh the threading in FF. It was never great, but now it is under load, and your software just fell over.

My codirector and many colleagues have IDENTICAL problems and similar/identical configs. They are now choosing Chrome as their browser of choice, and dropping FF because its become UNUSABLE.

Please, help.

Thanks

Rob Cain

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles
rob, create a new profile, and test there. Also, update your flash, quicktime, adobe reader, java, etc. to the latest versions that are found on the developer's websites. If after doing all that you still see an issue, create a new bug.

Comment 4

[rob cain]

thanks for the reply Tyler. 

now i could wast my time going thrugh some further tests. 

OR, you could admit there is a (threading/deadlock) problem with FF as attested by thoussnds of posts on this exact subject all over the web and all over your own bug board and all over your own forums. 

we cant all be wrong and we all have the exact same problem: your broken software!

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Rob, without you going, creating a new clean profile, and updating all your plugins, there are so man factors that we don't have any place to start. Obviously I use firefox every day, and if i saw such an issue I would file a bugreport myself, but i don't. See, we need you to give all the information. If you read all those bug reports, you will see that most of them are cased by extensions or old plugins.