Palemoon becoming more sluggish as the day progesses? Topic is solved

[Moonchild]

Thanks for testing.
I'll back out the one controversial change made (super-sizing purple-buffer thresholds) but leave the other improvements. That should prevent total hangs.

[PalleP]

It's about these setting. I remember I had a related issue some 3-4 years ago with Firefox.For virtual memory I used to have my own settings and my last try for solving the issue was to check "automatically manage paging file size for all drivers" then the problem disappeared. People who have this problem worth trying if they set virtual memory in other way than in the picture.

I have never touched this setting, but I checked anyway, it is set to default (auto).

[PalleP]

Thanks for testing.
I'll back out the one controversial change made (super-sizing purple-buffer thresholds) but leave the other improvements. That should prevent total hangs.

Please provide a download link when it is available.
Is there anything you want me to test next time I run into the problem?

[cf099]

Some further information, if this helps.

I can now re-create the problem consistently. I've been tracing my family history for quite a few years and I am currently using Ancestry's website very heavily. After working for a few hours, the symptoms always appear. The 2 things that are noticeable about my usage during this time are that:
1. I'm opening and closing multiple windows (not tabs) that contain large images which are scaled by JavaScript.
2. One particular section of the site which uses JavaScript heavily (creating and maintaining your own family trees) seems to provoke the problem quite quickly.
With all Pale Moon screens minimised except this one (but not touching the screen), I've just watched Windows Task Manager allocate more and more "Private Working Set Memory" to Pale Moon. This behaviour stops when I close the family tree screen on Ancestry.

I regularly re-start Pale Moon from its home page, and I clear the history (everything except Cookies and Site Preferences) reasonably often too (last cleaned yesterday).

With some guidance, I can easily force Pale Moon to dump, or to provide the JavaScript sources which may be contributing to the problem.

[cf099]

The problem persists in version 28.4.0 - I have just been forced to re-start Pale Moon after about 4 hours of use. Once again it's a small section of Ancestry's site which provokes the problem to appear so rapidly.

[PalleP]

The problem persists in version 28.4.0

Yes it does, but I guess you experience the same improvement as me:
Before I sometimes had to restart or force terminate PM several times per day, now it is only necessary maybe once a week.
So the changes in PM 28.4 are certainly on the right track, although they may need some fine tuning.
I have still no clue what websites causes the problem.

[cf099]

I have still no clue what websites causes the problem.

But that's where I can help because I can re-create the problem using a known set of web pages (which are unfortunately on a subscription-only website). I simply don't know what I should provide when I provoke/encounter the problem.

[PalleP]

I simply don't know what I should provide when I provoke/encounter the problem.

I have the same problem, I asked but get no answer.
Have you checked in about:memory if any of the mentioned websites create a ghost window when you close them (as Gmail)?

[Ozzed]

As the creator of the thread I feel like an update is due. Since the latest update I haven't been experiencing the issues, so on my end, whatever was causing the issue seems to have been resolved.

[cf099]

In reply to PalleP -

I have the same problem, I asked but get no answer.
Have you checked in about:memory if any of the mentioned websites create a ghost window when you close them (as Gmail)?

Since Pale Moon was starting to suffer, I have generated (and saved) a collection of memory reports before re-starting the browser. (I haven't cleaned the cache this time as I did that yesterday.) I don't see any ghost windows.

I expect that another re-start will be necessary tonight because I'm using the pages which seem to provoke this problem.

[Hmm81]

gmail ghost window still affects this build using linux. Although the effects seem a little bit more muted. However, if I relogin and relogout of gmail a few times over several hours, the amount of memory dedicated to the ghost windows significantly goes up, and there's more slow down, but at least it doesn't appear to completely stall for half a minute at a time, but merely feels more sluggish.

Hopefully sometime in the future. gmail can be properly garbage collected.

[Hmm81]

gmail ghost window still affects this build using linux. Although the effects seem a little bit more muted. However, if I relogin and relogout of gmail a few times over several hours, the amount of memory dedicated to the ghost windows significantly goes up, and there's more slow down, but at least it doesn't appear to completely stall for half a minute at a time, but merely feels more sluggish.

Hopefully sometime in the future. gmail can be properly garbage collected.

For those affected by the gmail bug, an alternative is to load gmail using html view versus the standard view. This causes it to not load all the scripts, and therefore when you close gmail, you don't have detached/ghost windows. Of course composing emails under html can be annoying, since it doesn't autosave, nor are there any tab functions, etc.

[Zootopia3000]

Been trying out Pale Moon off and on over quite some time now, never thought it was ready for primetime, sometimes even hard freezes/crashes, so always uninstalled. This 28.4 version is a very nice improvement, just recently installed again. However, this browser does get sluggish at times. I tried suggestion on this thread of going with Automatic System Managed pagefile and do see some slight improvement, whereas before I was going with a set pagefile size. My sluggishness problem lies with Disqus comments on very active sites (The Hill and Breitbart). After some many comments being displayed the scrolling can really, really start stuttering, page trying to catch up, other webpage tabs open like ESPN and CNBC would be affected also. Firefox does do better in this regard overall. When I re-sort Disqus comments by newest or reload page to get fresh comments the sluggishness goes away, however, when I had a set pagefile size the sluggishness somewhat still remained even after a fresh load of comments. Just my observation. I do know that Disqus is highly javascript intensive, probably where the overall issue lies.

This sluggishness problem happens on both Windows 7 32-bit and on Windows 10 64-bit with the 32-bit Pale Moon installed. I have yet to make the Windows 10 pagefile change, but would expect same slight improvement with a auto-managed pagefile.

Oh, and one other issue of note: On Betanews.com, when I zoom in page the right side frame (Fileforum downloads) will disappear, have to have page either zoomed out quite a bit (making for too small text size for my old eyes) or zoomed in way too much (frame scrolled off to side of monitor) to get the frame to reappear. I do use a custom setting for my font preferences... Sans Serif with Arial and font sizes of 16, and 11 for minimum font size.

For now will stick with this new Pale Moon and hope the sluggishness can be resolved soon on a new Final build. Only extensions I have installed are Adblock Latitude and Video Downloadhelper (6.3.1 xpi version).

[Zootopia3000]

Well dang, had my first freeze up then crash with this version. Was streaming something on Comcast, had a couple other tabs open with Disqus threads, then opened up search link to Lifehacker for something then the hard freeze and ultimate crash. Mighta been the autoplay video that started on the Lifehacker page, I hate those autoplays. Went ahead and disabled media.autoplay in about:config to hope not have that happen again.

[badnick]

I recently had to make my g-mail account because of acquisition of my first "smart" phone (android) and I have no issues with g-mail. Unitill now PM 28.4.0 works fine for me.

[Samson]

Just wanted to throw my own experience in here and say that Gmail seems to have been the reason for my own steady drop in responsiveness in PM as the day went on. I recently switched to collecting mail via Thunderbird on a POP3 setup and then got rid of the extension that checked gmail throughout the day. The browser no longer clogs itself up with ghost windows and hasn't been bogging itself down at all. Before I was getting all of the same things people described - scrolling hanging up for 1-2 seconds, typing stalled in boxes, pages would stall in the middle of rendering, etc. None of that is happening now.

It hadn't occurred to me to blame gmail at all until I was changing email addresses while consolidating domains and was in and out of it many times within a couple of hours and noticed the browser would turn to mush the more I kept doing that and the more I messed with it, the worse it would get.

[oldlinuxguy]

I'm using version 28.4.0 (64 bit) under MX-17 Linux on a lenovo ThinkPad W520.

I'm seeing the sluggish behavior as the day progresses.

I was also seeing in before I switched from Firefox to Pale Moon a few days ago.

I was blaming FireFox and then suspected Facebook but now I see that gmail has been implicated.

I have two gmail accounts auto-checked by Thunderbird - just toggled those to manual check vs autho-check.

I routinely have 20 tabs, or more, open - the sluggishness is recent.

Among the open tabs is often at least one YouTube link - could that be a cause?

Thanks for any assistance - for the moment I need to restart my computer once or twice a day.

[Ozzed]

I'm using version 28.4.0 (64 bit) under MX-17 Linux on a lenovo ThinkPad W520.

I'm seeing the sluggish behavior as the day progresses.

I was also seeing in before I switched from Firefox to Pale Moon a few days ago.

I was blaming FireFox and then suspected Facebook but now I see that gmail has been implicated.

I have two gmail accounts auto-checked by Thunderbird - just toggled those to manual check vs autho-check.

I routinely have 20 tabs, or more, open - the sluggishness is recent.

Among the open tabs is often at least one YouTube link - could that be a cause?

Thanks for any assistance - for the moment I need to restart my computer once or twice a day.

Something I have found to halp with Palemoon issues is to scan for corrput system files.

Run "sfc /scannow" in an elevated (admin) command prompt.

As you can see from my OP, I had the same issues but they have gone away, even when I use Gmail (i have an addon active that checks new mail once per minute).

It's nice that the issues are gone for me, but also frustrating to not know the root cause and what ultimately fixed it.

[Nigaikaze]

Run "sfc /scannow" in an elevated (admin) command prompt.

I really don't think that'll work, since he says he's using MX Linux.

[PalleP]

I had the same issues but they have gone away, even when I use Gmail (i have an addon active that checks new mail once per minute).

I have tried Gmail with an email client and that didn't cause trouble. Only by using the browser to login to Gmail causes trouble for me.
I am also pretty sure that Google Drive also causes trouble, but I am not sure yet.

Besides that I am now rather sure (99,9%) that PM 28.4 cures the problem for me as long as I keep away from logging into anything Google related. I have not had a single lag/freeze for several weeks now