Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Felix_Cold

Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 14:43

Initially after upgrade I couldn't even start PM as it was constantly hanging/crashing while trying to load set of windows and tabs remaining from before upgrade.

Suspecting quantitative overload, I tried to reduce number of windows and tabs as much as possible by closing them right after the very start attempts of PM, before it actually becoming "not responding".

After wasting huge amount of time for this (PM just didn't want to remember what has been closed in previous starting attempt and continuously tended to load all previous windows/tabs), I managed to at least start PM just to see that problem has been delayed somewhat but didn't disappear.

Next step was to disable MsMpEng.exe real-time protection which was conflicting with PM at every start of the latter - both trying to use all available CPU (this problem wasn't present before last PM upgrade!).

After this, problem with PM essentially remained - right after start PM used about 50% CPU (of 2x2GHz) and was either already unresponsive or appeared in this state soon after start with at most several simple user actions applied (like switching tabs or resizing windows).

After a few more computer and PM restarts (PM itself was re-installed 2 times - but retaining profile data, to not loose browsing session), now sometimes it starts alike normally with all windows and tabs present and CPU usage around 10%, but again, after just a few user actions, CPU goes high to 50%, PM becomes totally slow (even simple actions are delayed by a second or more to react), visible content gets corrupted (black areas appear on the screen) and soon after this PM hangs and/or crashes.

Frequently, when/if CPU usage gets increased to about 50% and PM becomes very slow, attempt to close or restart PM results in closing all but the last window i.e. the one from which restart was activated (RAM and CPU usage doesn't get lower despite most windows/tabs seem to be closed) and then I just end PM process in task manager to avoid possible session loss (so that next PM start will load all previos windows/tabs, not just the last one).
Notice: similar problem with temporary loss of some windows was also happening from time to time before upgrade - sometimes PM (re)started with just a few or even only one last active window visible (but still using the same amount of RAM as with full set of windows!) - then after one or more following restarts, full set of windows/tabs appeared again.

My actual "reduced" browsing session contains 8 windows with about 200 tabs in them.
(right before upgrade PM managed to deal with 13 windows containing about 300 tabs - however, after some usage time it also became corrupted and required frequent restarts, about once in every 15-20 minutes)

Amount of RAM actually used by PM now is just close to 400MB (of 4GB installed and 3.5GB usable) while before upgrade, RAM usage with previous larger set of windows/tabs was up to twice higher and still caused less problems.

Activity level of aforementioned problem also depends on actual websites - the more complicated content, the sooner hang/crash happens.
(for example if staying at this forum, PM can work without hanging for very long time, but visiting most other websites hangs PM in just a few minutes)

So in other words the actual state of things means PM becoming unusable for my browsing requirements.
Also I've noticed that in a few past years, PM becomes more and more problematic while handling large amount of windows/tabs.
(some 3-4 years ago I was happy to find that more resource-savvy PM could reliably handle about 25 windows with ~500 tabs overall what was too high load for Firefox leading the latter to too frequent crashes - regrettably, today PM seems to be too far from being able to handle that load)

Now the question is whether this is normal state of things with upgraded PM which should just normally behave in this way - or it could be some secondary problem present in my case so that it could be solved with sensible amount of efforts?

(actual troubleshooting info will be posted soon exactly from problematic computer, as now I'm on another better working one)

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:22

Troubleshooting info:

OS: Win 7 Ultimate 32-bit
PM version: 28 (default theme)
Problem URL: depends on complexity of website content
Installed extensions: TabMixPlus 0.5.0.4

Installed plugins:

Installed plugins

PM internal "troubleshooting info":

Hang report following soon (sorry, very large file)

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:27

Hang report part 1:

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:31

Hang report part 2:

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:32

Hang report part 3:

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:36

Hang report part 4:

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:38

Hang report part 5:

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:41

Hang report part 6:

therube: Board Warrior; Posts: 1651; Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by therube » 2018-08-23, 15:48

Adobe Acrobat appears to be well dated, with (primarily security) updates due.
Adobe Flash is ancient & vulnerable.

Do you need all those plugins?
Google, NVIDIA, Office, Java, Silverlight, Shockwave ...

If they're not doing anything for you, if they're not used, disable them.

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 15:51

And finally some more hanging-related info.

If after aforementioned problems start to appear (sluggishness, high CPU usage and bad content rendering) I manage to switch to less problematic tab, then after some time PM can somewhat "clean up" by itself and get back to seemingly normal state but just until I go back to more heavily loaded tabs.

Also, when trying to get hanging info from "WhatIsHang.exe", I see that while problems are present, various PM windows (i.e. their titles) appear and disappear in the list more-less chaotically - and they even may get absent again (i.e. list becomes empty) if aforementioned "self-clean-up" happens (but as I've mentioned, just to appear soon again later).

therube: Board Warrior; Posts: 1651; Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by therube » 2018-08-23, 15:56

Don't know if it's meaningful but "ForwardOrForwardDuplicate" is mentioned.
Have an extension along those lines?

Surprised that Windows Defender would be causing issues?
How did you determine that MsMpEng.exe was?

therube: Board Warrior; Posts: 1651; Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by therube » 2018-08-23, 15:57

What extensions do you have?

doofy: Astronaut; Posts: 650; Joined: 2017-08-14, 23:43

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by doofy » 2018-08-23, 15:59

therube wrote:Surprised that Windows Defender would be causing issues?

I'm not. It's been suggested here several times.

Caused issues for me; I turned it off.

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 16:12

Thank you all for suggestions - I will reply soon but first a few crash reports as required (both crashes happened while trying to close/restart PM after black areas appeared on the screen):

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 16:18

So I've switched ALL plugins to "always ask" state - not sure if this is enough to sufficiently disable them for further testing of recently upgraded PM, but anyway, right after I haven't noticed any difference - PM just has hanged once again in identical way.

How did you determine that MsMpEng.exe was?

Right by looking into task manager after I've noticed full CPU load.

I'm not. It's been suggested here several times.

Yes I'm aware but in my case it was PM upgrade what has actually raised the problem.

And, I've already disabled windows internal real-time protection (so now there's no excessive CPU usage by it when PM is active), but PM problems still remain.

therube: Board Warrior; Posts: 1651; Joined: 2018-06-08, 17:02

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by therube » 2018-08-23, 17:02

What I would do... as a start...

Create a new, clean Profile - make no changes.
Browse the web & verify that it is stable.

(Backup what you have. Hopefully you also have a backup from before 28 was installed?)

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 17:33

But is it possible to create that "clean profile" without losing my actual browsing session?
(as otherwise, this experiment has no sense - verifying if "empty" PM can still work is of no use for me)

And no, I haven't made any specific back-ups before recent upgrade (as well as never previously!) because I consider this frequently happening and automated upgrade action as part of browser ordinary daily use so not requiring such additional safety measures.
Anyway many previous upgrades didn't cause sudden new problems and so I was expecting the same also this time (why not?).

Let me clarify the situation once again - my goal is not to make PM somewhat useful by applying excessive efforts, but instead to know if existing and ongoing PM could complete my tasks without those excessive efforts.

Browser with already low and still degrading performance after "upgrade" - and even requiring additional "repairs" just to make it work somehow while well below my usual load - is not so much useful for me.

Last edited by Felix_Cold on 2018-08-23, 17:35, edited 1 time in total.

Sajadi: Board Warrior; Posts: 1226; Joined: 2013-04-19, 00:46

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Sajadi » 2018-08-23, 17:45

http://www.palemoon.org/download.shtml

Scroll to the portable version on that page, has a unique separate profile. Try to deactivate hardware acceleration also for a test in the portable browser options - activated hardware acceleration can also have a possible side effect for some configurations - from crashes to general instabilities.

Last edited by Sajadi on 2018-08-23, 17:48, edited 2 times in total.

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 18:22

Not sure if I'm using portable version correctly.

I've downloaded it to HDD (don't have any USB sticks on that computer) an launched in parallel to installed PM in order to try to copy and load the same set of tabs increasingly.

I can see "portable" process in task manager but no browser window.

Also, "AppCrashView" crash reporter already lists it as crashed ("stopped working") - the following message will include the respective log file.

Felix_Cold

Re: Significant performance degradation after upgrade to v28

Unread post by Felix_Cold » 2018-08-23, 18:24