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FireFox = total crap? And Jobs was oh so right about Flash, anyway. NoScript?

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dantheman:
It may be a long shot, but Firemin works for me.

peter.s:
4wd, thank you for this clarification. As for memory M, the problem almost exclusively lies within the FF memory block growing and growing, other applications just slowed down a bit (virtual memory on hdd since no more work memory), but it's FF alone that's frozen.

This being said, the Win version COULD play a role in that, nevertheless.

Wasn't aware even YT doesn't necessarily need Flash anymore, thank you! (But YT's Flash is not the problem after all, don't run YT in the background, and even then it's

dantheman, tremendous find, thank you so much, wasn't aware of such a tool, could probably bring LOTS of relief!

This being said, I must stay in a (at least, semi-) "controlled environment", so I just deinstalled Avira and reinstalled Avast, and as for now (always speaking of FF with de-activated Flash), it SEEMS to go much better, but cannot say for real yet. Again, with Avira at least, I've had those problems even with Flash de-activated (but to a lesser degree than with Flash running everywhere).

As soon as I'll know more about Avast, I then (only) will try Firemin, too.

Shades:
The Av (free) solution I prefer on resource strapped PC's remains BitDefender. That is lighter on resources and less intrusive in other ways than the competition, while getting good results.

FF is definitely a memory hog...but not necessarily much worse than Chrome or Opera. If you did not do this already, take a look "under the hood" of your OS with Process Explorer (you can get that for free from Sysinternals (a Microsoft owned company)). It will show you much more than the standard TaskManager does and allows you to terminate a process or process tree.

It also shows you info such as hard disk I/O, network I/O, interrupt use etc. This info might give you a better insight in what is happening on your computer and take (more) appropriate action(s).

As you said, your OS is old and likely your hardware has the same age. Electronics do not last forever and when moving parts are involved, it's even worse.

For example, your HD might be the reason why your systems slows down so much. During hard disk I/O, you expect some rise in the Interrupt values Process Explorer shows you. However, if those values are higher (above 5.0) when the system is idling, your hardware is fighting with each other and that is the first sign of bigger troubles. Also, when this number is high, you will experience tremendous amounts of slowing down. The same is true for network I/O.

With FF, who writes a lot of info to (virtual) RAM, generating a lot of network I/O (flash usually means streaming video), while the AV solution is doing a lot of disk I/O to keep your system safe...it doesn't take too much imagination to see that even minor hardware hiccups can cause big slowdowns on any computer. Aging hardware can throw you unexpected curve balls, be sure of that, at least.

Tools such as Process Explorer give you much more insight in what is happening in the background. On every computer I own, work with or have worked with, it is the first thing I install (actually, it is portable, so I should say: copy).

 

 

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