Firefox: Memory Hog

Stop Firefox Memory Leak With Firefox Plumber


If the programs running in your system were people, your memory would be the currency they used. It’s one of those things that are hard to conserve and easily lost. Everything from your browser to the harmless widgets on your desktop are just sucking away at your RAM. Firefox, one of the most loved browsers of all time, is notorious for its memory leaks. If you leave Firefox running for even a few hours, its memory usage can almost double. It may seem like some far fetched urban legend but it’s true; Firefox eats your RAM even when it’s running idle in your system. Firefox Plumber is a desktop tool that (like any good plumber) claims to plug your memory leak allowing you to leave the browser running until the next predicted rapture while it ensures no memory leak occur.

Memory leak occurs the longer the browser is kept running and everything from the pages you have open to the extensions you have installed effect how much memory is leaked. Firefox Plumber claims to provide a simple and free solution to the problem. Download the file, unzip it and run the Foxboost.exe file. A small icon will appear in the system tray and that’s all you’ll see of this little tool. As long as it’s running, it will continue to plug leaks. Developed by Rizone3, it works on much the same principle as their memory optimization engine with a few minor tweaks made to manage the memory leak in Firefox. The tool has no interface or complicated settings and runs quietly in the background. Based on tests, with up to 20 tabs open, physical memory usage went from 185MB to 4MB. The rest of it getting locked in virtual memory to prevent the leak.

Download Firefox Plumber

 

I decided to send this, although several final paragraphs kept disappearing.




That, and UP! keeps appearing at the bottom of my posts today ...... ????

 

Superb find KlickKatt. I was looking for something like this for a long time! I just ran the program and sure enough it does what it claims. Thanks a lot.

-- Goku

 

First of all Firefox issued the latest version 4 some months ago now but amid claims that the memory leaks had been stopped.

This did not appear to be true, as I suddenly found other things, including a video download, running terribly, in fact it was the video that gave me a clue.

I opened good old task manager and found it was hogging something like 700,000 K of RAM and while I watched, the figure kept climbing. I shut Firefox down and reopened it to see it start at a nice low of around 30 k, it then slowly started to climb again.

It just happens they released an update the day after which cooled things off quite a bit but it still seems to run high, even now it is showing 283,326 K and constantly going up, then back down but hanging around the 280,000 mark.

I shall download the tool and install, then report back what I find.

 

Wow, is really too small a word, just 2MB fluctuating up to 3MB and back down. It looks like it does exactly what it says on the tin.

However, a small concern is that McAfee site advisor flagged up the download site for Firefox Plumber, as red, but only warning to use the site with caution, and no real indication on the McAfee site as to why the red warning!!

A case of, go figure, I suppose.
Nev.

 

Mozilla appears set to fix the problem:

http://bit.ly/ms05le

Up!

 

And here we are in September with a few updates to Firefox since the last post, and still no positive reduction in memory hogging.
For some reason that I have now forgotten, I found a problem with the plumber and uninstalled it. Might just give it another go and see what happens.

Nev.