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Stop The Firefox Memory Leak..!

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:10 am
by AYHJA
1. Open a new tab. Type "about:config" without quotes into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.

2. Right-click anywhere, select New, then Integer. In the dialog prompt that appears, type:

browser.cache.memory.capacity

3. Click OK. Another dialog prompt will appear. This is where you decide how much memory to allocate to Firefox. This depends on how much RAM your computer has, but generally you don't want to allocate too little (under 8MB), but if you allocate too much, you might as well not do this. A good recommended setting is 16MB. If you want 16MB, enter this value into the dialog prompt:

16384

(Why 16384 instead of 16000? Because computers use base-12 counting. Thus 16 megabytes = 16384 bytes. Likewise, if you want to double that and allocate 32MB, you'd enter 32768.)

4. Click OK to close the dialog box, then close all instances of Firefox and restart. If your Firefox still uses the same amount of memory, give it a few minutes and it should slowly clear up. If that fails, try a system reboot.
[hr:6247a6186a]

And just like that, Firefox's only flaw is gone.....

Taken From:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-blo ... 7586/posts

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 2:17 am
by WAY
Thanks for this..
about:config also has some other useful variables to modify, I'm sure you can find some other changes on the net, too..

VERY handy..!

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:46 am
by fatboy42
Thanks for the info.

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2005 4:54 pm
by theoclepper
nice hint, will try soon... thk you!

Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:17 pm
by jdog
Thanks for the update. That is indeed the only negative thing about Firefox.

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:37 pm
by bd55
Thanks for the info, very handy!

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:24 pm
by jdog
Has anyone gotten this to work? It didn't work worth a crap to me.

I did find something out after reading. The "memory leak" is nothing more than Firefox caching websites into system memory and then not dropping the website after the tab is closed. So it stays in cache until Firefox is closed and restarted.

The workaround? Similar to above:

1. Open a new tab. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.

2. Scroll down till you see "browser.cache.memory.enable".

3. Double click on it so that the value says "false".

4. Close browser and open it again. This should prevent Firefox from even using your system memory for webpage cache.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:58 pm
by AYHJA
Sweet..! Maybe they work in combination, and my dumb ass forgot to add it... :?

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:37 pm
by fatboy42
QUOTE(jdog)1. Open a new tab. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit enter/click Go.

2. Scroll down till you see "browser.cache.memory.enable".

3. Double click on it so that the value says "false".

4. Close browser and open it again. This should prevent Firefox from even using your system memory for webpage cache.

I tried that and it screwed Firefox up. I couldn't get onto imageshack and a few other sites would load, but the frames wouldn't. I changed the settings back and everything is back to normal.

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:31 pm
by AYHJA
Back in the day when I had limited memory, I used to use a program called "cacheman" to free up RAM...Given the recent memory woes w/FF taking up 3, 400 MB, I decided to look them up...

Well, they have a new software, and it is called cahemanXP...Its easy to install, handy, and best of all, can sort memory issues of ANY program in a single click...Right cick, free memory, and boom...

Pre click:


Post click:


It can also put a nifty little numerical counter in your system tray, in case you want to keep tabs on it...Very handy little program with quite a few features, I recommend you try it out...Of course it would be nice if FF didn't use so much memory, but this program itself doesn't use much memory, and has a ton of features...

http://www.outertech.com/