Firefox memory leak and virus attached to svchost.exe?

spartanreborn · 05-27-2008, 03:05 PM

Alright, I have two problems that have been bothering me for sometime.

Problem 1:
I'll start with the firefox deal. I have the latest version of FF2 (version 2.0.0.14) but I have noticed that after about ten-fifteen minutes of browsing, firefox tends to take up an unbelievable amount of memory, as in over 100,000 K, and thats only after ten minutes. Pretty much any time I browse the internet, task manager lists it as the process that uses up the most resources. Hell, some games don't even use that much memory. I understand that browsers tend to use up more memory the longer they are run, but it shouldn't be that bad after ten minutes. Any specific ideas, or should I bring this to some firefox help support forum?

Problem 2:
As for the other issue, I have only ever noticed this after coming out of hibernation. Upon coming back to my desktop, one of the svchost.exe's that are running jumps way up in memory usage, to about the same numbers I listed above (between 80,000K-100,000K), and won't come back down. I have noticed that after ending that particular process I tend to lose any capabilities for my sound drivers to work (none of my media players can produce audio output, although I believe that Windows retains the various system beeps ), forcing me to reboot. Not that big of a deal, but this is more of a hassle than I would like to go through everyday. This sounds kind of like a virus has attached itself to that articular svchost.exe, although Symantec has never detected any such problems. Would a HijackThis log help?

Thanks for any responses!

**sobeit** · 05-28-2008, 02:48 PM

problem 1 - nothing you can do about the memory leak - maybe turning off some of your addons will help, its a known problem with ff2. ff3 is supposed to solve the problem. It should be released in about a month. I have been running ff3 rc1 and it seems to be a whole lot better - just most of the addons dont work with it yet.

problem 2 - its tough to know what the svchost is working for. Maybe turn off your startup items one by one until you can determine whats causing it.

05-27-2008, 03:05 PM	#1 (permalink)
spartanreborn Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 2 OS: WinXP SP2	Firefox memory leak and virus attached to svchost.exe? Alright, I have two problems that have been bothering me for sometime. Problem 1: I'll start with the firefox deal. I have the latest version of FF2 (version 2.0.0.14) but I have noticed that after about ten-fifteen minutes of browsing, firefox tends to take up an unbelievable amount of memory, as in over 100,000 K, and thats only after ten minutes. Pretty much any time I browse the internet, task manager lists it as the process that uses up the most resources. Hell, some games don't even use that much memory. I understand that browsers tend to use up more memory the longer they are run, but it shouldn't be that bad after ten minutes. Any specific ideas, or should I bring this to some firefox help support forum? Problem 2: As for the other issue, I have only ever noticed this after coming out of hibernation. Upon coming back to my desktop, one of the svchost.exe's that are running jumps way up in memory usage, to about the same numbers I listed above (between 80,000K-100,000K), and won't come back down. I have noticed that after ending that particular process I tend to lose any capabilities for my sound drivers to work (none of my media players can produce audio output, although I believe that Windows retains the various system beeps ), forcing me to reboot. Not that big of a deal, but this is more of a hassle than I would like to go through everyday. This sounds kind of like a virus has attached itself to that articular svchost.exe, although Symantec has never detected any such problems. Would a HijackThis log help? Thanks for any responses!

05-28-2008, 02:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
sobeit TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: NEAR Posts: 7,433 OS: windows/linux	Re: Firefox memory leak and virus attached to svchost.exe? problem 1 - nothing you can do about the memory leak - maybe turning off some of your addons will help, its a known problem with ff2. ff3 is supposed to solve the problem. It should be released in about a month. I have been running ff3 rc1 and it seems to be a whole lot better - just most of the addons dont work with it yet. problem 2 - its tough to know what the svchost is working for. Maybe turn off your startup items one by one until you can determine whats causing it. __________________ there's been global warming since the ice age