Hello,

The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information. Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
2. Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.

Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Thank you.

Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Try this ~ it helped my memory usage drop dramatically! :)

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/how-to-reduce-firefox-memory-consumption/

I am not sure how old that advice is or whether or not it is still appropriate. You could try keying in to the addressbar about:memory and using the button to reduce memory usage. That should at least give a quick and temporary fix.

• see Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix

Regarding the changes see

• http://blog.bonardo.net/2011/09/02/changes-to-places-memory-consumption-expiration-and-performances

History size my now be reduced automatically if necessary when more space is needed for bookmarks.

I have been fighting the CPU is at 100% and dragging problem for months, and it had got so bad that videos and sound files would not play, Facebook wouldn't scroll (I'd crank the scroller on the mouse and nothing happened except the task manager was solid green for "swamped", or allow comments because of "busy scripts", and images would no longer upload. I have wireless super fast internet, and on my other Wx7 64 bit machine it sings, but on my XP machine I was almost dead in the water, the CPU constantly swamped. I fiddled with plugins because the plugin container was running a lot of 'k' in the task manager, more every day. Firefox was hovering at just under 500,000k almost constantly.

AVG kept prompting me to solve this with AVG PC Tuneup, but I already had CCleaner so I just assumed it was corrupted files in the OS and I was sunk. This morning, I took up AVG and downloaded PC Tuneup, and one of it's tasks is fixing the "firefox.exe" error.

Now Facebook scrolls all the way down without freezing, hesitating, or hiccuping. I thought the mouse was broken, because the scrolling has had this blank spot in the wheel that drove me nuts. That is gone. All programs scroll in real time, and Firefox runs just fine. Videos play, with the sound not cutting out, and no longer constantly stopping and going black. This software fixed my OS, and that fixed all the Firefox problems, which were evidently interrelated.

Try it, you'll like it. And if you install the trial run, run it (and fix your computer), then uninstall it, AVG will offer you the program for half price. So I bought it, because undoubtedly whatever chewed up WXP will chew it up again...

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestion Jackiemearound. Tried AVG a long time ago, was not a good fit for me. Using Avast and am happy with that. I fixed my high CPU and memory usage finally today after much frustration and research. I only use one extension and 4 plugins. The most tabs I have ever had open has been 6. I did not start having this problem until the last two updates of Firefox. Uninstalling Firefox totally (and I mean all files and folders, including my profile data) and doing clean install did not work... neither did resetting Firefox which seems to be a favorite suggestion voiced here. Here is what I did:

Monitored which processes and services were using high memory and cpu then looked to see if those were essential. Stopped them from startup and running period if not. (Media player was a prime example)

Uninstalled programs not being used via Revo uninstaIler and then deleted any files left via Voidtools Search Everything.

Did full system scan with Malwarebytes and removed any entries it discovered.

Ran System file check service and checked log for files it was unable to fix

Ran Chk dsk in safe mode and let it do its magic then restarted in normal mode.

As of right now, Firefox is using an average of 12% CPU with an occassional spike that only lasts seconds and memory is staying around 350k. Sorry for the lengthy explanation - hope it can help someone else. :)

My OS is Vista 32 bit with SP 2

I have come across suggestions that AVG & CCleaner can cause problems not just fix them. I would be interested to know more about whatever the fix is.

and one of it's tasks is fixing the "firefox.exe" error. 

Maybe that fix is simply configuring AVG so that it does not interfere with Firefox !

Otherwise if it is fixing something, there is probably an alternative simple method of doing something similar.

Experimenting with Hardware acceleration on or off is worth a try because that is designed to improve speed by using the GPU but sometimes it does not work well and makes matters worse. Using Safe Mode may be a good initial test.

• Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode

FlashPlayer is also used a lot, and may causes all sorts of problems. Again experiment by disabling Flash Player to see if that helps and may be something requiring further investigation.

Running in Windows Safe Mode is also worth a try as a troubleshooting step because that stops some of the none essential Windows processes from running.

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode
• http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx
• for notes on troubleshooting this is a good comprehensive article to refer to
  http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox

Ok, so I spoke prematurely earlier when I said I fixed my problem... While what I did above did seem to fix my high CPU usage, the memory continued to spike until it reached well over 2 million then it crashed. Since I used Vista 32 bit with 4gb memory, this obviously was not acceptable. Absolutely none of the suggestions mentioned to fix the problem worked ~ resetting Firefox, creating a new profile, uninstalling Firefox, doing the tedious task of troubleshooting my 4 plugins, which weren't the problem, starting in safe mode, etc. I ended up totally uninstalling again (3rd time). Except this time, I did not reinstall FF 22 or even FF 21.... both did the exact same thing. I reinstalled FF 20 and guess what? It works beautifully! No high CPU or high memory. Whatever changed from that version to the next two apparently wasn't good....

Hi Blondemermaid,
It really is not wise to use an unsupported and insecure Firefox 20, that increases risks to your personal data and System.

If like the poster of the question your initial solution was to create and use a new profile.

That suggests to me that the core problem is something with your profile. It may have been better to; as a troubleshooting step; try a new profile yet again in Firefox 22. If that works then investigate further to identify and resolve problem properly.

• some users would find the the quickest fix is using Firefox Reset
  Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

Whatever is happening you would do better to start your own thread using /questions/new. If you post back here once you have done that anyone interested will be able to find your new question.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but did you read my previous post in it's entirety? I know you're trying to be helpful and I appreciate that, but the same suggestions are given repeatedly even after I stated I had done all that and the problem still remained. I didn't say that my initial solution was to create a new profile. What I said was that I had tried every solution that had been suggested and none of them worked. I HAD FF 22, it wasn't working... I reset Firefox which didn't work, uninstalling plug-ins and extensions didn't work, creating a new profile didn't work, uninstalling Firefox totally from my system including my profile file and the installation directory, etc and reinstalling a clean FF 22 didn't work. I even had a professional check my system - its not my computer! It does me no good to update to a version that crashes every hour and renders me unable to use my computer. The internet is full of people complaining about Firefox using high CPU and memory, but I didn't have these issues until recently. They did not occur with FF 20 and previous versions. So, while using a previous version may not be my first choice, it makes more sense than using one that doesn't work. Hopefully the next update will truly fix the problem. I can wait til then. :)

Sorry I do sometimes loose track of exactly what an individual has said especially when multiple users ask questions.

You are free to risk using Firefox20 but that avoids the problem rather than trying to investigate and solve it. Firefox 20 will rapidly become more and more outdated as new versions release every six weeks.

Many of these problems are down to individual setups that is why it is best to start a new thread.

• N.B. Mozilla Support rules and guidelines asks users always to ask any questions in a new thread
• It is also a good idea to turn on telemetry , that was introduced after a memory regression in Firefox 4 was missed by developers.

Maybe you have actually have run up against a so far unknown problem if so, and it is possible to reliably reproduce it a bug needs to be filed so that developers may investigate and fix the problem. That is something we can do or help you with.

Probable more likely explanations are that it is due to

• an interaction with a plugin or some other third party software
  • includes malware, security related software and FlashPlayer problems
• use of some specific problematic site
• additionally I recall mention recently of a Firefox developer being interested in a possible memory problem on OS X Systems (not sure if anything came of that)

Developers would prefer to work on problems that occur in the latest Nightly versions on the grounds that other problems may already be fixed, but of course Firefox/Mozilla is interested in problems with current Release Firefox 22 but earlier versions are unsupported.

If you post your own question (use /questions/new) and follow the prompts to provide troubleshooting information at least we know a lot more about your setup

• plugins registered with Firefox,
• extensions you have
• most changed preferences
• Operating System (Or at least the User Agent String)

If you or someone else does actually have an intractable memory problem in Firefox 22 that occurs in a clean profile and with none; or all but one plugin, or security system disabled I am sure Tyler or one of the Firefox developers will be able to get to the bottom of the problem.

That may entail use of the advanced Firefox developer tools

• about:memory
• the Profiler

Unfortunately because Firefox is highly customisable and has a user base of around 1/2Billion there always will be thousands of users reporting memory problems. The ordinary average user should not have problems. Mozilla will have crash data, feedback comments, and telemetry details all helping to confirm this is not a problem for most users. A lot of this data is publicly available, but may not be too easy to interpret.

It is important to realise that doing a websearch and discovering users reporting problems does not confirm the majority or even a large (percentage-wise) minority have similar problems.
Additionally the same symptom, such as high memory usage, may well have many different causes so that often necessitates quite a bit of troubleshooting just to narrow down and rule in or out some causes.

I forgot to mention this but for anyone keen to help investigate memory problems that are apparently occurring in Firefox 22 but not in Firefox 20 it is possible to install multiple versions of Firefox. (On a suitable computer it is even possible to run them simultaneously if necessary or for direct comparison)

Whilst that is not something normally supported and could be considered advanced we will happily give further advice to anyone needing to do that for troubleshooting purposes, or as a temporary workaround for memory problems.

If you want help trying that start a new thread of your own then post back here to say you have done so.