Firefox memory usage problems - nothing seems to work. Any advice?

Question

I'm tired of Firefox taking up too much memory on my computer. I have Vista Home Premium and 2 GB of ram, but Firefox feels free to eventually use above 400 MB even with just one window and a few tabs open.

I've tried almost every measure I can find. I've tried decreasing the size of the cache in the options - doesn't work. I've been to the about:config area and set browser.cache.memory.capacity to a lower value - doesn't work. I've set config.trim_on_minimize to true, but when I minimise, nothing happens. If anything does happen, the memory actually goes UP instead of down. I've tried running in safe mode - memory usage starts off lower, but still increases to a ridiculous size in the end. I've tried almost everything I can find on Google (most of which suggests what I've tried above), but to no avail.

As a note, I have noticed that memory usage goes up when loading a page, but never goes down again, whether I click back, close the tab, clear the cache, etc. By merely jumping back and forth between the Firefox Start page and the Yahoo! home page, I managed to get the memory usage from about 50 MB to about 120 MB in under a minute. And nothing I could do would make the memory usage go down again. And again, this was while running in safe mode.

I did the same test with Internet Explorer and it was capable of releasing memory when moving to a different page. As a result, the memory usage overall when hopping back and forth barely went up at all.

So, can anyone give me some advice as to how to reduce Firefox's memory usage? I really don't want to switch browser just because Firefox is such a memory hog.

If any further information is required, just say and I'll post it.

Answer 1

Firefox's next version, 3.6, is designed to take up considerably less RAM, processor usage and also less crashes.



The beta should be available soon :)

Answer 2

You can download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox from here http://j.mp/1p6klm7



Mozilla Firefox is one of the world's most popular web browsers and, to me, it's the best.



Have a nice day

Answer 3

I am so happy that I found your post today.



I've been having exactly the same problem with Firefox as you and I have 1Gig of RAM!

Like yourself, I have found that none of the usual solutions work.



After wrestling with this for some time now, I'm going to wait for the next upgrade of Firefox. If this memory problem is not addressed, I'm using another browser.

Answer 4

not sure if this will help but the more add-on you use the more ram FF will use and if you changed the skin FF may look pretty but the skin add-ons are the worst resource hogs

Answer 5

Buy a Mac

Answer 6

try using another internet program try and use windows internet explorer