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Question

firefox eats my cpu

May 4, 2018 5:31AM PDT

I had big problem with google chrome because it was working in background eating around 50% of cpu without even opening it or appearing in anywhere except the task manger,
i uninstalled it and installed firefox, now firefox makes the same thing.
as you can see in the image < https://ibb.co/e7rkin > that annoying background thread of firefox takes about 28% of my cpu and goes up to 30% causing cpu to boost to 3.5GH wheres the opened firefox itself takes 5% and goes down to 1%.
not to mention this firefox background program causes my laptop to heat up.
my lap specs
core i 7700HQ
any ideas!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: firefox eats cpu
May 4, 2018 10:19AM PDT

Looks like you're infected with some malware. Maybe cryptomining?.Reset Firefox to default settings (google that if you don't know how), and if that doesn't help enough delete the Firefox profile in your appdata\roaming and appdata\local folders and start over. Yes, appdata is an hidden folder, so you should tell File Explorer to show it.

Scan with MBAM (free download) and with your antivirus to see if those find more you don't want on your PC.

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Answer
good old - bad old - Javascript ...
May 4, 2018 6:11PM PDT

Well, Javascript isn't really bad or good in its own right. It is a programming language, not too different from any of the legion of others. This one is very popular for adding programming logic to web pages (which without it would be totally static, just like Tim Berners-Lee originally invented it at CERN almost 30 years ago.)

There is just one hassle with having web pages with programmed contents - too many bad programmers turning out too much bad code and letting it loose on zillions of mostly unsuspecting users. It gets especially hairy whenever they try something fancy. The vast majority of bad code used to be in ads (it was even worse when Adobe Flash was still popular.) Or, when a web site tries to restrict what users can do with the information displayed - can't download a photo? Javascript is probably involved.

This would all be bearable if it weren't for the fact that a lot of that code has bugs - infinite loops, memory leaks, the whole range - sometimes only kicking in if a web page is displayed in the bachground for a long time, getting forgotten. Often then, it will max out one CPU to 100%. Now, if your system has a dual core chip it will show 50% used, on a quad core you will see 25%. On the old single core CPUs you would now be blocked 100%. Since browsers, like most software around, can only use one CPU at a time, they become completely unresponsive when that happens, while other, unrelated software can still work. Some newer browsers can use additional CPUs for certain tasks, so they night get a slightly higher CPU load than expected (30% instead of 25%, for instance.)

So, in cases like this: Nothing wrong with your computer, nothing wrong wit your browser, probably not even a virus, just bad web sites, possibly just a broken ad, bad Javascript code, most likely.

Nothing much you can do, except go and browse somewhere else Wink

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Answer
Try Chrome again, else - Opera
May 4, 2018 8:55PM PDT

We all got duped by Mozilla when they announced the new version. What you are seeing is quite normal. Try again with Chrome, it's gotten better with the last couple of releases. If not, try Opera - it's pretty fast and lightweight. But compatibility is not 100 % so you will want to keep an alternative handy.

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Ummm...
May 5, 2018 7:19AM PDT

No it isn't.

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Rare but not unheard of.
May 5, 2018 7:37AM PDT

It's not a rare issue but not hitting everyone either.

That idea of an 100% compatible browser is a myth as well.

Post was last edited on May 5, 2018 7:46 AM PDT