Firefox spikes CPU Usage | unresponsive – Windows 7 x64

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This has been occurring frequently recently.
I know that when Firefox (now v95.02) boots, it sprouts numerous processes (currently 7){Task Manager – Processes}.
I am running Windows 7 x64, ESU, Group “B”. I am completely patched.
The unresponsiveness seems to ensue when I try to access a command on the Menu Bar. Firefox freezes | becomes unresponsive. Task Manager – Performance shows that the red line and bars process spikes to over 25%. The only recovery from it to terminate the process; the one causing the CPU Usage spike. This abends Firefox. I have tried terminating other Firefox processes. That does not restore responsiveness.
A search read to Checking | Unchecking ‘Use recommended performance settings’. I have tried both. Neither option prevents this. Currently, it is checked.
Does anybody here have an idea of what I can do to prevent this occurring? This has gotten bad enough that I now use the Brave browser for more (but not all) Internet surfing.

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When you unchecked Use recommended performance settings’ did you also uncheck “use hardware acceleration when available”?

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PKCano wrote:

When you unchecked Use recommended performance settings’ did you also uncheck “use hardware acceleration when available”?

Yes. When this box is checked, that aspect does not appear. I recall it also asked how many processes I preferred. That was set to 2.

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As a test go to the Settings – General – Performance section of firefox and untick Use recommended performance settings then set the Content Process limit to 8 (default) Ensure the use hardware acceleration is ticked.

Leave it like this for a day or two whilst browsing normally to see whether the issue is still present and let us know, thanks.

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Does this happen when you use a site for a long time (or the site requests many resources and runs scripts from many other domains)? The possible cause may be that the Firefox JavaScript interpreter has gotten bogged down with a bad section of code or processing many running scripts.

A site can consume all available free memory because of this and Windows will start swapping Firefox to storage causing such unresponsiveness.

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I can second the observations here by anon.
There is certain web site (a US State governmental one) that I’ve been frequently recently. After doing extensive Searches there, cycling through the Search routine, Firefox slows to winter molasses. Resource Monitor show that FF is seriously thrashing.
FF is running around 25% CPU utilization, but the Page file is totally swamped.
The solutions are: Close FF; or exit the Search site.
Either solution takes a little time as the Page file has to climb out of the hole.

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Hi Steve,

Can you post screenshots of what extensions are installed? When Firefox begins to become unresponsive, could you post a Windows Task Manager screenshot of the working set memory for each of the Firefox processes? I attached example screenshots for each.

Best regards,

–GTP

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Firefox used to perform sluggishly for me after watching YouTube videos for a while. I resolved this by setting browser.<wbr />sessionstore.<wbr />interval to 1200000 which is equivalent to 20 minutes. I recall that the default value is 15000 or 15 seconds. With the default value and while on some sites such as YouTube, the working set memory consumed by some of the running Firefox processes will slowly and steadily grow even if you pause the video you were watching. Firefox will become less responsive as more memory is consumed. I recall that Firefox started to become less responsive when any of its processes had consumed more than a gigabyte of RAM, and became very unresponsive after around two gigabytes of RAM was consumed by a Firefox process. Setting the sessionstore interval to 1200000 milliseconds (20 minutes) resolved the memory consumption issue.

The downside to setting the browser.sessionstore.interval to 20 minutes is that your browser session is saved only once every 20 minutes rather than once every 15 seconds. I never restore previous sessions, so this is not an issue for me.

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Hello to Steve and GTP, PKC, etc.

Steve you mentioned, “I am running Windows 7 x64, ESU, Group “B”. I am completely patched,” but you did not mention what computer specs you have. If this is an older computer with a limited amount of RAM, such as 4 gigs, you might want to consider an alternate browser.

You also mentioned, “I know that when Firefox (now v95.02) boots, it sprouts numerous processes”. My computer has limited RAM and CPU. I am already having BAD issues with Firefox 78 ESR (as I did with 68 ESR) and I could not see myself going to Firefox 91 ESR or ANY Firefox 90+ version. When I looked at the download file for the newer Firefox it was 2 times the size of my old 78 ESR and I knew it would be an issue.

I respectfully suggest you see my post-2408341.

However, there are some good people here and if you decide to keep Firefox I am sure they can give you some decent suggestions.

Good luck.

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Post 2408341, for those interested.

cheers, Paul

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