I’ve been keeping records, and I find I have to restart it (Firefox, in this case) at least every six or seven days, or it becomes frustratingly slow due to CPU usage spikes (by this time, it generally takes up about 1.7 GB of memory, and is generally responsible for a little over a GB of inactive memory).
Is this an unusual thing?
Since I turn my computer off every day, I guess it’s every day by default. (Unless I’m missunderstanding the question.)
No no, you’re not. I suppose I should’ve allowed for that. I usually keep mine on (in sleep) all the time — mostly because it’s my home computer, and no one has yet told me a reason why I shouldn’t (or should do the opposite).
When I put my computer into sleep mode every night, I close everything up, too. I guess I like to run a “clean” system, for lack of a better way to put it. Maybe that has something to do with why I don’t see FF becoming a memory hog like I hear complaints about so often? Right now it’s taking up 400MB with 8 tabs and a YouTube video running, with flash taking another 150MB for the 1080p video. I dunno, don’t know much about it, not really sure if that info is helpful at all. I do a total system restart whenever I get annoyed enough with the pestering for updates, I think just once a month or so.
No, it’s a common problem with browsers. See this thread for example.
Opera user. I also hibernate at night rather than sleep/power off. So quick boot in the morning with everything back the way it was.
If things go well, I might go a couple weeks easily. But that has been happening less lately.
There’s something wrong with the video drivers so that I can a crash a minute or two after leaving a page with video (esp. YouTube). Also some pages are just plain browser crashers. Makes restarting the browser tricky. Of course I want to restart right back to where I left off, but not that one page. So I have to kill that tab as soon as possible while stuff is still loading.
For several major versions of Opera there’s been a disk thrashing bug. It just goes disk crazy for a couple of minutes. I notice it most on morning wake up or after I’ve done a big CPU job (video processing, etc.). Opera is aware of it and has just plain stopped responding to complaints about it. Nice one. Anyway, the longer I keep the browser running, the more likely this will occur and then it starts happening a lot. So while I hate to close and restart, I find myself doing it more often than I’d like. So even going a week is becoming rarer.
(BTW, I currently have 23 tabs open in 3 windows. Some of these have been open a month or more. One for most of the year. Don’t really want to lose most of these if the browser crashed and couldn’t recover them.)
At least daily and if I’m going to be out for more than two hours, I shut the computer down completely. My location is likely to get sudden, severe thunderstorms so I frequently unplug the computer from the wall during those times.
I use FF, sometimes Chrome and I’m forced to use IE for a couple of things. I’ve heard of people keeping their computers on for a year but I wouldn’t. It seems to me that it can’t be good for it, no matter how well the browser is working. I rarely have more than three tabs open in a window at once although I may have six or more windows open. If something is important, I just bookmark it and make notes of it by subject. Some things I keep only on the computer but certain subjects I make a paper note as well so I can find them faster.
I have my monitor set to turn itself off after about 15 minutes of disuse.
I close Firefox every night, but I haven’t turned off the power since I got the new desktop a couple months ago.
It uses Windows 8. I don’t know if it goes to sleep or not, since I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to set it to sleep mode. Maybe it sleeps. The machine is so quiet, I can’t tell.
Besides, I’ve already forgotten my admin password, so if I powered it off, I’m not sure I can get it back on. 
I basically don’t. Because I use Chrome, I can terminate an errant tab or process - like Flash using 2.5 GB :eek: - without affecting the rest. So I only restart my browser when there’s an update or when I restart my PC, and my PC is always on too, and it only really gets restarted if one of Microsoft’s patches demands it.
At least once a day, probably more. My laptop just sleeps at night so this isn’t really necessary, I just like a clean start sometimes. I have everything bookmarked I’ll need; 7/8 folders and some of them have probably more than 60 websites bookmarked.
My home computer is rebooted when it has a random hardware freeze, about once every week on average, but it varies widely/wildly. I put it to sleep when I’m not in front of it, but the browsers stay open.
Firefox (version 12) will crash (or become slow enough for a mercy killing) every few days (maybe 12 hours of use); I have it set to reopen the last tabs so it’s a minor annoyance.
I also have Chrome with a few dozen tabs open all the time, some of them incognito (so I can use two Google accounts); it crashes very rarely, maybe once every 2 weeks if the computer can remain alive that long.
Oh: Windows 7, 64-bit, 12 gigs of RAM.
I start Firefox every time I surf the web and close when I’m done. I’v never seen any advantage to leaving Firefox open.
CCleaner is set to clean my cache and wipe history every time the PC is rebooted. Which is once a day (I shut my pc off when I go to bed).
This one’s coming on for 8 months including reboots and minor outages.
It’s actually better for the PC if you leave it on. No startup surges, no time for dust to settle, fewer heat cycles, etc.
Heh. I regularly have 40+ tabs open.
yes it is unusual for a browser to go 6 or 7 days without crashing.
I power down both my computers every night. I’ve always shied away from sleep and hibernation modes because on laptops that used to be hell to the battery. I once cut my battery life in half in the matter of a week when I tried sleep mode out once. What with the fast bootup times in this day and age, there’s really no reason for me to pick sleep or hibernation over shutting down - I get up to speed just as quickly either way. If computers didn’t come with lights on them or generate heat I’d probably not mind leaving them on so much, but lights and excess heat in my bedroom are not things I’m fond of. (Then again, some computers now run quiet enough you need a light to know they’re on…)
Firefox has had a bad memory leak for about as long as it’s existed. It was known to be especially bad back in the early versions. FF is probably the worst one when it comes to the leaks. It’s very common for it to eat up whole gigabytes of memory when left alone - it used to be able to do it in a matter of hours and a google image search.
I frequently close my browser simply because I am not using it and would prefer the memory it was using to be used elsewhere.
You were definitely not using the right form of hibernation and possibly not the right form of sleeping.
On all systems I’ve used recently, hibernation is complete power off. The state of the machine is stored on the hard drive.
On newish laptops, sleep mode (which could be triggered by just closing the cover) should also save things on the hard drive, but it’s a hybrid or solid state drive so shutting down and waking up is nearly instantaneous.
RTFM.
I leave firefox up all the time and pc stays on pretty much always unless something forces a reboot, and I don’t really have problems. I usually have a few windows open each with 5 or 10 tabs and I run adblock.
The only time I have problems is when I leave YouTube up on a tab for days. It doesn’t always cause problems but sometimes it does, not sure if there was a bug that has been since fixed, not sure.
The only things that stay open are my email client and my chat client. Everything else gets shut down when I walk away from the computer, so about twice a day- after work and before bed.
The computer itself stays on 24/7.
I’ve never ever had a problem with browser memory leaks.
I turn my computer off every evening. I can’t see the sense in leaving it on - it may just use a trickle of electricity, but I see no sense in wasting that trickle.
A lot.
2-3 total starts from no power at all.
Had many computers, never had one crash yet from being turned on & off. ( proper shut down procedures. )
I have never gotten any type of malware when the computer isx shut down.
Everything is on a UPS.
Computers & monitors, modem, & routers, etc…
Between my & the wifs stuff, that is a lot of heat when it is all running.
YMMV