How To Stop Firefox Hog On Memory Usage

How To Stop Firefox Hog On Memory Usage

Firefox still uses more memory than most other web browsers. Truthfully, the amount it uses is ridiculous. Firefox can use up to 500MBs of memory if you keep it running. In addition, you will see that the memory usage keeps rising because of, you guessed it, memory leaks. Some Firefox users even reported memory usage over 1000MBs. That is half of the memory gone on most computers.

So, is there a solution? The answer is simple, Firemin. You will see its effectiveness almost instantly and the best part is that it is completely free. To use Firemin; you will need to download the Firemin.exe file, decompress it and run Firemin.exe from the extracted folder.

Download:
http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-postdownload.php?p=191013&t=4&i=1

Now we need to clear up some confusion about Firemin. Firstly, Firemin uses a safe API function called EmptyWorkingSet that basically forces the process (in this case Firefox) to use less memory. Other words, tells Firefox to give back some of the system memory it’s hanging on to. For those of you who are a little more technically minded, you can read more about it here

Using this function will sometimes result in a slight performance decrease measured in milliseconds , but I do mean slight, the chance of you noticing the performance decrease is almost zero.

Firemin is not one of a kind. There are similar “Firefox memory boosters” available; however, most of them are frauds (work mostly contain spyware and malware) or work using the Placebo function (if you think it will work, it will). Firemin does not contain any malware and actually do decrease Firefox memory usage, up to 95% (under 1MB in some cases). Firemin has not received any negative reviews and no side effects like browsers crashing have been reported, “knock on wood”.

Even though Mozilla keeps claiming that they fixed their memory-leaking issues, it seems like this is not completely true. Maybe one day, but until then, Firemin will lend a friendly hand.

From CNET.com .... Firemin runs in the background, but a system-tray icon let us open the program's options as well as launch Firefox normally and in Safe Mode. Firemin's Options dialog has a slider for configuring how it optimizes Firefox for your system. To the red-tinted left end of the slider, Firemin shows a CPU; to the right of the bar, the spectrum shifts to green and the program displays a tiny stick of RAM. The bar graphically illustrates how Firemin optimizes Firefox: The more optimization you set, the faster Firefox runs, but it required more processing power. Sliding the control to the left puts the emphasis on RAM. Firemin also displays the amount of RAM allocated to Firefox numerically, from 100 to 1,000MB. By default, Firefox doesn't launch automatically with Firemin, but we could set the option to launch the browser normally or in safe mode when Firemin starts. Finally, we could specify different Firefox installations by browsing to a different folder than the default installation.

We tried surfing with Firefox with Firemin set at either extreme. Our test system has but two Pentium 4 processor cores but 8 GB of RAM, and our favorite sites seemed to load a bit faster with Firemin's slider set all the way to the right. On systems with less memory available for Firefox, we can see how shifting the burden onto your processor makes sense. In any case, we like having the ability to customize how Firefox uses memory in our system. Add its leak-plugging potential, and this freeware will find a place next to many Firefox installations.

This application, that was previously known as Firefox Plumber, doesn't require installations and is very easy to use. When you launch it, an icon will appear in the taskbar and by right clicking you will see a menu with the different functions:

You can open the options of Firemin to configure the optimization level: to get a Firefox optimization that is quicker, more resources will be necessary but the memory usage will be lower.
Start the optimization of Firefox.
Launch Firefox.
Launch Firefox in secure mode.

With Firemin you will get a very simple way in which to make your Firefox browser to consume less RAM memory, and therefore, for your computer to work with a better performance with the browser open.

I can personally attest it does work.. after you optimize it and launch Firefox when the app is running. Memory usage remains pretty constant even with multiple tabs open.