FireFox or Malware Problem

For the past couple months and now, even with the latest FireFox version, my PC will slow to a crawl, including slow mouse commands. Bringing up Task Manager indicates FireFox.exe is consuming most of the resources at those times. This will continue for a long time, rendering my PC almost useless.

I'm not real PC savvy, but might I be hosting something nasty? I run a start up scan (Advanced System Care Pro) which always clears out some junk. I also use AVG and Spybot. The problem may happen after I log onto the local newspaper -- I'll have to pay closer attention.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

You might have inadequate memory.

In the "Performance" tab of the Task Manager, check the Commit Charge (total and peak) and compare it to your physical memory.

firefox, though, is notorious for consuming allot of system resources -- not sure they ever fixed their memory leak problems. could be purely firefox's fault.

it would be odd to do a full virus diagnostic on this forum -- so let's bring out the big(ish) guns first.
as a start, run malware bytes anti malware:
www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
post the results of the scan, or, PM.

Thanks, cichih. This problem is intermittent and FF doesn't normally use enough processing resources to notice.

Occasionally, however, the green Taskmanager "meter" will go solid green and FF.exe is then consuming ~98% and won't stop. I'll have to shut off the UPS because even the PC power switch won't work.

jayflash said:

Thanks, cichih. This problem is intermittent and FF doesn't normally use enough processing resources to notice.

Occasionally, however, the green Taskmanager "meter" will go solid green and FF.exe is then consuming ~98% and won't stop. I'll have to shut off the UPS because even the PC power switch won't work.

Click to expand...

One of the things that Firefox frequently does is take random pages of memory. Think of your RAM as a huge set of shelves of a certain size. If you have 1.5 shelves of stuff to store, you put it on the next 1.5 open shelves. Tabbed browsing in general tends to leave small amounts of oddball junk on a lot of these spaces, which causes your computer to go into crazy swap mode - this is a likely cause if you hear your hard drive making noises (or the disk access light - often a cylinder - is on).

I hear that "The next version is waaaaay better" - but if they don't stop adding bells and whistles we'll need yet another light alternative to (oversized sluggish browser). I hear good things about Opera these days...

If you aren't short on hard drive space changing the cache size (Go to About:Config, then search Cache) probably won't help much. Browser.cache.memory.enable will force firefox to put the cache on the hard drive instead of in RAM. Disk writes are slow, but having all your RAM hogged by old pages is slower. Good luck!

jayflash said:

Thanks, cichih. This problem is intermittent and FF doesn't normally use enough processing resources to notice.

Occasionally, however, the green Taskmanager "meter" will go solid green and FF.exe is then consuming ~98% and won't stop. I'll have to shut off the UPS because even the PC power switch won't work.

Click to expand...

Still need to know how much memory you have and how much is in use to be of any help. As a computer tech, this was my diagnostic starting point for slow computer complaints. 90% of the time it was a memory issue such as a leaky app that was in use for a long time.

What version of FireFox are you using? I had memory issues a couple of years back with whatever the current version was at the time. I've been continuously upgrading since, and haven't had any issues for years now.

That said, scan your computer with AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy, just to be on the safe side.

Also, enable NoScript and AdBlock into FireFox.

I'm back again and thanks again, everybody, for your help. The on-line local news paper installs "Netflix" at every log on and that's when I have trouble, as far as I can tell right now. That was one of the applications running along with the CPF. When I stopped it I had to log back on to the CPF as it closed FireFox.

My PC only has 384Mb of RAMBUS -- yeah, she's a dinosaur. The memory leak may also be a problem after hours of on time because the PC slows down.

I had to uninstall AdAware due to a problem locking up and IIRC the Tea Timer was using lots of memory. NoScript also caused a problem, perhaps all related to my too little RAM.

Normally only a few percent of memory is being used unless I'm up or downloading. Idle processes only consumes a few percent.

You mention that your online local paper is "installing NetFlix" each time you visit. It sounds like they may be running a bad script that is taking up all the CPU cycles and freezing Firefox.

Try installing NoScript and see if the issue is resolved.

jayflash said:

My PC only has 384Mb of RAMBUS -- yeah, she's a dinosaur. The memory leak may also be a problem after hours of on time because the PC slows down.

Click to expand...

I think she should have a nice, long rest after all these years.

When having problems ............

run FireFox in .... "Safe Mode" .......


If problems clear up , an Add-on , Theme or Plug-in was causing your trouble.

Begin a process of elimination by dis-abling groups of Add-on's and Plug-in's until FireFox runs properly.

Somewhere in the last group you disabled was the reason for FireFox to run poorly.

Safe mode is a usefull diagnostic tool to determine where the problem is .

.

Many thanks for all the help. I'll continue to try the various suggestions, but for now reinstalling NoScript has helped. I'll pay closer attention and monitor any changes. I have read of some vulnerabilities with FFox, so I may try addressing them.

You guys (no gender inferred) are great. I appreciate your donated time and will pass it along to someone else when an opportunity arises.

You might want to look into getting a cheap "netbook" or even a "nettop" computer. For a few hundred dollars, you would get a basic computer that is perfectly adequate for web browsing, watching movies, and listening to music. Any netbook would be much better than what you have. It will probably be very difficult to upgrade your computer (unless you can somehow find someone selling the same RAM that it uses, but as it is fairly old that might be hard). Computers these days are relatively cheap for what they can do; you might want to look into upgrading.

Begin a process of elimination by dis-abling groups of Add-on's and Plug-in's until FireFox runs properly.

Click to expand...

Yep. Or the problem is some web page trying to install an update like Acrobat or Flashplayer. Sometimes this will drag your system to a crawl if there's an installation error.

Again, yet another reason to NOT SURF with admin rights because not only does it bullet proof your PC from crudware, but prevents flaky apps from installing without asking first.

greenLED said:

What version of FireFox are you using? I had memory issues a couple of years back with whatever the current version was at the time. I've been continuously upgrading since, and haven't had any issues for years now.

That said, scan your computer with AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy, just to be on the safe side.

Also, enable NoScript and AdBlock into FireFox.

Click to expand...

Perfect comments. NoScript is a must. I've noticed FFox uses a lot of memory, but the addons can and do have their share of memory leaks. Try disabling them all and see if it helps. Slowly enable and find the culprit(s).

This or something similar happened to my friends pc this week. Firefox was using 50% cpu at all times, even when it was closed. An complete uninstall and reinstall of Firefox fixed it.
Also Malwarbytes antimalware is a great program for scanning.

Whenever FireFox gets RAM and CPU intensive (I've had it to the point of using over 1.5 gigs of RAM with 75%+ CPU usage), I open Task Manager (ctrl+shift+esc), find firefox.exe, and click "End Process".

What that does is forces FireFox to quit, which will gain back your RAM. You can open FireFox back up after you do that, and click "Restore Previous Session". That will bring back all your tabs from when you forced it to quit. This method has always solved my problem when FireFox uses up tons of RAM and CPU power.

~Brian

I agree with the post above about getting a netbook to wander the net and e-mail. I can't speak for everyone, though I think many of us do have parts on hand. Depending what you may need, we might be able to help with some period updates to nudge your system performance.

What are your current system specs?
CPU, memory, hard drive, OS...

Just an update: No more problems since NoScript was reinstalled. No more excessive firefox.exe RAM drain.

I don't plan any upgrades to this old Dell Dimension 8100 due to its age and it's plenty fast for web surfing. 384Mb of Rambus may be tiny by today's standards, but it seems to be fast enough for browsing.

I'll save my money for a new PC.