This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak

By +Warwagon
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

saw this over on Digg.com and win98centeral, I searched the forum here and didn't find it.

Basicly puts firefox on your hard drive and out of memory when you minimize it to about 10meg. I tried it and it works great.

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.

2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.

3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.

4. Now select True and then press Enter.

5. Restart Firefox.

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/03/26/th...ox-memory-leak/

Proficient

joshpo

Posted
Posted

Yeah I saw this on digg yesterday and tried it out. It does help, and on my system there isn't any lag in maximizing and minimizing. Basically it shifts most of ff to the page file from memory when minimized. Also there is an additional edit on the page linked above,

I have also set the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers value to 0 because that will prevent Firefox from caching pages for the back button. This is also supposed to free up some memory that gets stolen.
Grand Master

raskren

Posted
Posted (edited)

Huh?

All Windows applications page out when they are minimized. What's so new and exciting about this?

Anyway, if there truly is a memory leak, asking the application to use less memory won't do a darn thing about it.

Edited by raskren
Grand Master

funkymunky

Posted
Posted

Huh?

All Windows applications page out when they are minimized. What's so new and exciting about this?

Anyway, if there truly is a memory leak, asking the application to use less memory won't do a darn thing about it.

Well it has.

Max: 52

Min 7.5

Mentor

Catharsis

Posted
Posted

No it hasn't. Obviously, nobody understands the difference between inflated RAM usage a true RAM leak.

Some of us do, but you KNOW that people use the terms synonymously. Why argue about it?

If you're having problems with Firefox, I suggest you try this:

http://www.opera.com/

Yeah, because Opera doesn't use up a lot of memory.

:rolleyes:

Proficient

Slipdisc210

Posted
Posted

Are you kidding me? You do realize you hurt performance by offloading to the pagefile since HDD access is slower than RAM access, right? This also wouldn't solve any memory leaks.

No I don't think anyone is kidding you. This is a very serious subject of FF memory usage.

Yes I do realize you hurt performance by offloading to the pagefile since HDD access is slower than RAM access but I'm not trying to win any race or set any new benchmark records. However, I am not trying to win a slow race either. So I think this config setting helps out quite a bit. But to be honest, my browsing seems to be somewhat faster than before. It is without a doubt taken no major performance hit. I do minimize the window quite often while working.

It should be painfully obvious to someone that after applying this, their browsing has taken a performance hit.

But this is not so in my situation. I would have to assume that I speak for many others who have used this as well. Before

isthisbad.jpg

And after, I use about 10-15mb

my sys specs are in my sig.

btw, what browser do you currently use?

Veteran

planetik

Posted
Posted

@ovenmitt, bangbang makes his own nightly build for firefox. :rofl:

I have to agree with bangbang. Although it does reduce RAM usage, you're going to have to reload the info from HDD, which is slower. If firefox is eating 500MB of your RAM, restart it?

Grand Master

+Majesticmerc MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted
isthisbad.jpg

My god, how many extensions do you have??? :blink:

I'm gonna leave this one off methinks. I have RAM to spare, and I'd rather have it all in RAM for easy access than have the hard disk access delay and save myself a couple of Dozen MB when I minimize Firefox.

Collaborator

Samanthala

Posted
Posted

not mine, I tested it before I applyed the tweak, before I applyed it I had 124 ram ussage and the same when I minimized it

I don't understand: I tested before I applied it as well - at first, it looked like it was staying the same, but mine still went from 55-60 to about 10 after a second...can anyone explain?

Grand Master

Veedems Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I don't understand: I tested before I applied it as well - at first, it looked like it was staying the same, but mine still went from 55-60 to about 10 after a second...can anyone explain?

This only does something when you minimize Firefox. Windows, however, does this for all apps. Minimized apps always take up a bit less RAM when minimized because they get paged off.

Mentor

phot0nic

Posted
Posted

Are you kidding me? You do realize you hurt performance by offloading to the pagefile since HDD access is slower than RAM access, right? This also wouldn't solve any memory leaks.

You know, the second I read the post, I thought the same thing. I figured that it would slow down because you're using the HD rather than the RAM, but it doesn't.

Even though Firefox is behaving memory-wise over here, I figured I'd give it a shot. My RAM drops big time when I minimize, and it doesn't hurt my performance at all.

I understand that you're a wiz when it comes to Firefox, but give it a shot. Do you notice any performance drops, either in the program or when browsing?

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