Need help with a problem I'm having with Firefox

[JKgo]

...The problem started about last week, when Win 10 did one of those super-intrusive ninja updates.

While browsing, the memory usage, as can be seen on the Windows Task Manager, spikes periodically with no reason, completely freezing the browser for a second or two. Then the the CPU usage goes up, usually up to about 50% before the whole thing returns to normal and the browser functions again. This happens multiple times even while no websites are loaded, ie only a single blank tab.

During normal browsing, the memory used up by the FF hovers around 400~600 MB but when this freeze happens, I've seen the numbers shoot past 1100+ MB.

Any ideas? I was thinking that one or two extensions/plug-ins might be wonky or something, but on the health report section of the FF doesn't mention anything. But other than the faulty hardware, I can't think of anything else that could cause this strange spike in memory usage. Any opinions, preferably educated ones, are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Grayfox]

Go to Help>Troubleshooting Information>and Click Refersh Firefox.

This will return it to its out of box state.
You will have to resign into sync
Your bookmarks will have to be resynced
Your add-ons will be re downloaded.
If it happens again, it could be an add on.

I will also recommend that you set Flash and Java to "Ask to Enable"
This will not load flash automatically which will improve security and performance of firefox.
You will get a little box below the bookmarks toolbar(if enabled) addressbar asking if you want to enable flash on sites that use flash.

GTplanet uses flash for the attachment system so you can set this to Always Activate on GTplanet if you want to.

 

[Robin]

I have seen this behavior with Firefox when it is writing a huge amount of data to it's sessionstore files every 2 seconds or so but this is usually because there are many tabs open and it's having to remember them.

If this is happening with only one tab open the FF install could be corrupted in some way. No real problem to re-install it just to rule it out.

On a side note Windows 10 'System and Compressed Memory' "feature" is utter garbage causes lots of lock ups and heavy disk use.

 

[Grayfox]

I just remembered about one add on that gave me huge amounts of memory usage.

AdBlock Plus.

It had/has? a memory leak in the code, since switching to uBlock origin these issues went away.

 

[JKgo]

...I want to thank both of you guys for responding to my query. Yeah, so I'll try following some of your methods. That thing about AdBlock is quite surpriing to hear, though - I've never had any trouble with it, but if that's the case.... Hmm.

What about Grammarly? I have it installed and use it frequently, but right after I created this thread, even it began to give me bizarre problems.

I guess I'll just try reinstalling the FF and see what's what. Failing that, I could always go Chrome or Opera....

 

[Grayfox]

...I want to thank both of you guys for responding to my query. Yeah, so I'll try following some of your methods. That thing about AdBlock is quite surpriing to hear, though - I've never had any trouble with it, but if that's the case.... Hmm.

What about Grammarly? I have it installed and use it frequently, but right after I created this thread, even it began to give me bizarre problems.

I guess I'll just try reinstalling the FF and see what's what. Failing that, I could always go Chrome or Opera....

No need to reinstall firefox, just refresh it, it will be like it was a fresh reinstall.
No add ons, no bookmarks, ect.
These will be saved on %userprofile%\Desktop\

I dont use grammarly as firefox's built in spell checker works fine and you can add dictionaries to it so it should work for your locale spelling.
Just uninstall Adblock Plus and install uBlock Origin and things will be much better.

 

[JKgo]

No need to reinstall firefox, just refresh it, it will be like it was a fresh reinstall.
No add ons, no bookmarks, ect.
These will be saved on %userprofile%\Desktop\

I dont use grammarly as firefox's built in spell checker works fine and you can add dictionaries to it so it should work for your locale spelling.
Just uninstall Adblock Plus and install uBlock Origin and things will be much better.

...So, the status update:

I got rid of the AdBlock and went with uBlock as recommended, and observed for a day and a half the memory spikes and browser freezes. I can safely report that it's gone now. For good. The memory usage rarely peeks past 700mb even when viewing a video online. And joy oh joy, NO MORE BROWSER FREEZES!! Praise the lord.

However, a new problem: Grammarly. It has stopped working properly now. Already reported the issue to the app developers and waiting for their reply....

 

[Grayfox]

...So, the status update:

I got rid of the AdBlock and went with uBlock as recommended, and observed for a day and a half the memory spikes and browser freezes. I can safely report that it's gone now. For good. The memory usage rarely peeks past 700mb even when viewing a video online. And joy oh joy, NO MORE BROWSER FREEZES!! Praise the lord.

However, a new problem: Grammarly. It has stopped working properly now. Already reported the issue to the app developers and waiting for their reply....

I stopped using adblock plus as I was going to 2GB of RAM usage, when I got rid of it, everything was nice and smooth.
And this was a year ago, so adblock have not even fixed the memory leak issue.
Guess they are too busy counting the money from the ad companies they let through adblock plus