Why is Firefox suddenly using all my system resources?

I had something akin to that happen once too. I was able to resolve it by uninstalling some of the plugins that I had grabbed when the idea seemed so neat, but never really used. It hasn’t come back since.

@ETpro Thanks for your answer. I have just looked through my plugins again, and I use all of them regularly except for one or two which are disabled. I have four called “Java Console” though, but I am not sure what to do about it since my university site is Java based. Do you know what effect uninstalling three of them would have?

Ditch the Fox, get used to Google Chrome.

Badly written extensions can also do some damage. It is trivial to write on that will peg your CPU.

And what version of Firefox are you using? I’m a bit unsure if you are still using a 2.* version. I don’t remember if the 3.* version was pushed automatically. If you are still on 2.* then that is probably your problem. Just grab a new one 3.6.3 and see if that helps.

@johnpowell I’m already using 3.6.3. I haven’t installed any new extensions in some time, although I have updated some automatically. Is it possible for an extension that previously worked to update to bad code and then use a lot of my CPU? Can this also explain the huge RAM usage?

Have you ever tried to clean up your system? This might help

I notice that sometimes a specific site will have a spike that will lock up my Usage at 100%.

This used to happen to me with the TV Guide site. Once I closed the connection my usage dropped to 0–2%.

Does your usage lock up to 100% when you’re online with just any single site?

@FutureMemory I use CCleaner regularly. It only affects Firefox, and not any other programs.

@Brian1946 It happens no matter which site I visit, usually even before I leave my home page.

@FireMadeFlesh

It maybe your anti-virus too!

Try using FEBE to save your profile. Delete your database, delete your default profile, and use FEBE and Profile Manager to restore your settings. You may have one corrupt file somewhere.

@Tropical_Willie I have been using AVG Free successfully for years, and have not recently changed any settings.

@dpworkin I will try that, thanks.

I have removed all the older versions of Java Console, and used CCleaner to remove temporary files, and it seems to be working okay for now. Thanks everyone for your help. How can I stop Java updates installing multiple versions?

There’s an open-source free download called JaRa that will remove all previous Java installations.

@FireMadeFlesh Get rid of Java Console. It is no longer supported and does use system respources plus constantly check for updates that will never be there.

Because it’s telling you you need to switch to chrome ! (Which uses the same source code as firefox but is far more optimized)

@superjuicebox Chrome uses an entirely different rendering engine than Firefox. It is WebKit layout engine based, as is Apple’s Safari and a number of Palmtop and Cell Phone browsers. Major parts of the source code are available for download under various open-source licensing.

Chrome is blistering fast to load and light weight. I miss the menus and intuitive access to controls, though. And I find the Web Developer tools less informative than Firefox with Firebug installed.

Have you tried Opera 10.5? It doesn’t have a large market share, but it is beloved by a lot of sophisticated people.

@dpworkin I have Opera and all the other regularly used browsers. As a Web developer, you must have the whole gamut and test in all, because things that look great in one and are coded per the book 100% will sometimes fail miserably in another browser. IE is famous for miss-rendering correctly coded HTML. For years, Microsoft produced web development tools that used proprietary code and browsers that worked well with Microsoft standards but botched W3C and Internationally approved standards. Maybe an accident, but somehow I think it’s more likely they wanted to dominate the WWW.

@ETpro Are all versions of Java Console outdated? I left 6.0.18 installed. I am thinking of switching to Chrome for most things anyway, since I managed to find extensions to match all the ones I thought I would miss from Firefox and it is noticeably faster to launch.

@FireMadeFlesh As far as I know, Java Console is no longer supported as a plug-in. Chrome does have a nice open-source Java engine, Chromium. It’s open source under the BSD license, so look for lots of development.

@ETpro

How can I determine whether I have Java Console?

If you click Tools it should list the plug-ins installed.