Subscribe to magazine

WiFi Finder

Locate wireless services by a specific address, city, state, country, airport, or zip code.

Get Connected Now

RSS Feeds

Get our latest content via convenient RSS feeds.

See All RSS Feeds

Become a PCW Member

Join the community and start enjoying the benefits:

Get tech advice from thousands of PC World Members
Rate and recommend the latest tech products
Share your thoughts in blog and article comments
Get free excerpts and exclusive discounts on Super Guides

Signing up is free and easy.

Restart Firefox to Reclaim Memory

Speed your browsing by clearing the cache.

Scott Spanbauer

Open task manager to find out how much memory Firefox has claimed; restart the browser to make more RAM available to your system. Click to view full-size image.

Firefox is my favorite browser, but it's far from perfect. Even if you've minimized the number of add-ins (which can be buggy memory hogs) you use, closed the tabs that you've finished viewing, and limited the amount of memory the browser can use for cached content, Firefox can still bog down your computer by eating up an unreasonable amount of RAM.

To find out how much memory Firefox is using, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to launch Windows' Task Manager, click the Processes tab, and scroll to the entry for firefox.exe. Depending on the size and number of pages you've viewed recently, the amount listed in the Memory (Vista) or MemUsage (XP) column can run into the hundreds of megabytes. To curb Firefox's appetite, exit the program and then relaunch Firefox and Task Manager to see how much memory a fresh instance of the browser uses.

"Restart Firefox to Reclaim Memory" Comments

SMB Networking Center

Learn how the networking products from Cisco can give your business a competitive advantage. Cick here.

VoIP Web Demo

Learn how VoIP technology can improve your business communications. Join Us for a Live Web Demo

Tags at a Glance

Mozilla Firefox - Internet Browsers - Technology - Science and Technology - Internet

Related Web Articles

Collaboration Under SOA: The Human Aspects This book chapter from Executing SOA: A Practical Guide for the Service-Oriented Architect shows how Web 2.0 business concepts apply to businesses, especially those enterprises that adhere to the philosophy of SOA.
Printer Ink, Prohibitions, and a 108-Inch LCD This week our readers are all over the map, weighing in on printer ink, Sony's 108-inch LCD, and the FCC's probable action against Comcast.
Broadband Innovations, Part 2: Fiber Optics Reaches the Tipi In Part 2 of our four-part Broadband Innovations series, see how the Ktunaxa Nation of Canada uses fast broadband to save its indigenous language and culture from extinction.
Drizzle Project Plans a Stripped-Down MySQL A new open source project is develoing a new micro-kernel database based on MySQL, targeted at large-scale Web applications.
Broadband Innovations, Part 1: The 21st Century Athlete Broadband is helping to redefine the modern athlete. Meet gamer Patrick O'Day, who hopes to compete in the worldwide Digital Games in China this fall.

More Related Web Articles

Myth of the Million Dollar Database Think only the big boys can afford the best database solutions? Think again. Learn about low cost systems that have proven time and time again to outperform legacy UNIX vendors on a dollar for dollar basis.
The Future Sales Force - A Consultative Approach This white paper discusses the challenges of selling complex products and services, and the new skill sets sales professionals must employ in today's evolving market.

PC World's Marketplace

PC World's Free Whitepapers

Canadian Residents | Foreign Residents | Gift Subscriptions | Customer Service | Privacy Policy