Firefox - Make it fast!!

If u use Firefox most of the time and have lots of extensions installed and if u cant imagine life without Firefox then this post is for u.

If ur Firefox hangs for no reason and take 90% of ur CPU usage then it might be due to Memory Leak problems.

About memory leak - a process that over time can gradually eat away at system resources. In worst-case scenarios, a memory leak could cause an application to become unstable.

The following are some of the reasons that may cause memory leaks in Firefox

• Bad live bookmark causes Firefox memory usage to grow endlessly and make the browser unstable


• Memory leak (especially in graphics-intensive webpages), freed upon minimize


• When saving a picture, HUGE memory leak! Also slows machine down!


• memory leak if page contains a refresh meta-tag


• Memory leak when I leave firefox up with a few sub tabs open


• Firefox begin to eat memory and hangs after opening this URL


• very slow restore from minimize after memory growth compared to other applications

The following points are pretty useful to speed up Firefox

1. Disable prefetch: go to about:config. Search for prefetch, you'll find network.prefetch-next. Double click it to turn it false if it is on.

2. Limit the memory cache: about:config, new integer, browser.cache.memory.capacity, set it to the memory in KB you want to limit the memory cache to.

3. You can Install FasterFox tweaking extension - It allows you to prefetch links and tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

4. If Mozilla Firefox hangs as soon as you launch the browser, the issue is probably either with an installed extension or a theme. Try running Firefox in Safe Mode (firefox.exe -safe-mode) - If it runs normally, disable or uninstall the problem causing theme or extension.

5. Firefox can hang is there is a memory leak. Installing too many extensions or opening lot of browser tabs can hog memory. Disable all extension that you haven't used since the past week

6. Adobe Reader browser plugin can consume huge amounts of memory. To disable the Adobe Reader Firefox plugin, open the Firefox plugins directory and delete or rename the nppdf32.dll file.

7. Firefox can also crash when you close a tab that is loading or playing a Java Applet - Always disable Java plugin, it will also reduce the CPU usage.

8. In certain configurations, disabling Mouse Gesture in Firefox helps curb memory spikes.

9. Don't install Adblock extension with Firefox 1.5 as it causes an increase in Firefox memory usage. Instead use AdBlock Plus.

10. Setting the browser history to extremely large values will increase memory usage. Keeping the history to a reasonable level is a good idea for this reason.

If u want to know more on fixing memory leaks check out the following links

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=354828 http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/01/solutions-to-common-firefox-15.html
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=175800132