Firefox and WinMedia - HELP!

[Australis]

Well, the problem seems fairly straightforward to describe but I have no idea how to fix it or what the exact cause is.

The PC: Celeron 800 MHz, 512 Mb RAM (an old Compaq - yes, I know, it's just set up the way I like it and is easy to use).

The player: WinMeda Player, v10

OS: XP SP2

The browser: Firefox - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10

In the last couple of updates from FF, I've noticed that when a graphics or ad-heavy page is being loaded, WMP will stall, and resume after the page is loaded. Sometimes it causes FF to freeze, and I have to pause WMP to get it through.

It was more of a problem when I only had 256Mb of RAM onboard. It just annoys me a lot because back with FF 2.9 it didn't happen. I note that when I open Task Mngr to see what's happening, the CPU is running at 100% and FF is using about 100Mb RAM

Looking on the net, all I could find was a plugin for WMP for FF, but I gether that's just for playing embedded files.

So, what do you wise techsperts say? Is there a memory or resource allocation issue? Shoud I extend virtual memory? Any advice welcome.

 

[M'Sharak]

Sounds like more a question you'd want to ask in Science & Tech or maybe in the Misc forum. Tech Support is oriented toward identifying and resolving tech issues in the workings of TrekBBS.

 

[Australis]

Ah, well, if you could kindly move to Sci & Tech, or I can repost if you'd prefer.

 

[RevdKathy]

I can move it for you.

 

[Jadzia]

Thankyou for calling Sci-Tech

Unfortunately, none of our trained staff are available to answer your query at the moment.

Please hold the line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd_viuLxGVQ


edit:

I expect it's memory saturation. Web browsing seems to guzzle a lot of memory nowadays, and software updates usually make that software more demanding of system resources.

Because usually, the newer the software, the slower it performs. They rely on you making hardware improvements to counterbalance that.


You can:
1. extend virtual memory if that is running short. Not ideal, but it should improve speed. A hard disk defrag might be beneficial also before you do that, if you do that.
2. purchase more ram. Better solution. Doubling what you've got won't cost much, and 512MB is really a minimum for comfortable web browsing these days.
3. disable flash media and/or javascript, which is likely to be what's guzzling the memory, even though that might cause some problems. A compromise.

 

[Brent]

Have you tried doing a cleaning of temp internet files, history, cookies etc... ? Clear all that out, also, use CCleaner to clean out other junk files on your system, and then give it a try again.

 

[hyzmarca]

The freezing is more likely to be a result of stressing your processor. Media intensive pages, and some badly written javascript, can take up a lot of CPU cycles.

Open up your task manager and see that your CPU usage percentage is when that happens. If it's in the high 90s for an extended period of time, then that is your problem, especially if any one program is in the high 90s for a long time.
If its a RAM problem then you would hear hard drive thrashing as it tries to access the virtual memory. Of course, more RAM is always useful so upgrading that might help.

I'll recomend against using Windows Media Player and suggest going with something lighter, such as VLC.

One trick you can use to prevent or mitigate media player slowdown is to increase the priority of the process. Every process runs at a certain priority, the higher priority processes get CPU cycles first. Increasing the priority of a process above normal allows it to run smoothly no matter what else you're running, with the disadvantage that it can slow everything else down. Most media players have a setting that allows you to increase their priority.

 

[Australis]

Thanks for the advice everyone... except for the elevator music. It was boring.

As hyzmarca said, it seeems to be a CPU issue rather than a RAM issue, as watching Task Mngr freak out as pages are being loaded seemes to confirm it, while the RAM stays lowish. Also, WMP does seem to chew through the CPU as well.

I do have VLC, which I use for video files, but I prefer the convenience of WMP on the taskbar.

Hmm. Well, I'll try changing the process priority. The problem I can see there is that I'll have to choose one or the other, FF or WMP. I could set both to high, but the system still then has to decide how to handle it. There's also the possibnility that there might be a faster CPU floating about the place I can put in instead, I just dunno if it'll freak everything out if I do a swap (I gor my hardware experience in the bad ol' days before plug 'n' play. )

I'll post back later what happens.

 

[hyzmarca]

If you're not using noscript, get it. Reducing the amount of Javascript and Flash that your browser runs can greatly reduce the CPU usage, especially when using multiple tabs.

 

[M'Sharak]

If you're not using noscript, get it. Reducing the amount of Javascript and Flash that your browser runs can greatly reduce the CPU usage, especially when using multiple tabs.

I'll echo this. Many ads and some websites include horrendously processor-hungry scripts which can bring older machines to a near-standstill. NoScript gives you the ability to quickly allow or disallow scripts on a case-by-case basis.

 

[Australis]

I tried NoScript before, and didn't like it. Howver, I've added it again today, and now I understqand it a bit better, and have enabled some pages, it seems to be fine.

The problem before was that the hotkey scripts for the bold or italic text didn't work and I had to type them in. But I looked a little harder and found how to enable pages, and they came back. Hey, I'm an old guy, learning stuff is a pain at my age.

I'm certainly not encountering the problems I was before. I'll try it again for ther day and get back to you.

 

[Australis]

Well, it's a day later, and yes, NoScript seems to have done the trick. Temporarily enable some pages, don't enable other certain things, fully enable other pages. It's a hell of a lot better than it was. Cwertainly mo real lockups and freezes. It stuttered once.

Thanks to all. I will tell ALL my friends to come here