and I noticed my fan turn on. That was really odd as that only happens when I am actually straining my computer. I’ve got a brand new Dell Latitude D520 laptop–that’s a Centrino Duo 1.66ghz dual core. After looking in my system monitor program and the task manager, I noticed that my processor was pegged at 100% usage, and Firefox was using 96-99% processor time in Windows task manager. I closed it in desperation–this was freaking me out. It went away and left the processor idle again, and I am happily browsing like normal once again. I am wondering, have any of you Firefox users seen anything like this? A quick Google suggested that the Flash plugin might be causing this, but I didn’t see any flash content on the page I had open.
At first I had suspected my anti-virus, but that’s not what task manager said.
I’m confused. And there are no updates available from Mozilla, so they either haven’t seen this problem or don’t have a fix yet.
I hate it when I break stuff.
Just curious as to whether or not you’ve seen this type of behavior in FF. FF2 has given me other troubles, too–the “grey window of death” I call it, I will post a screenshot when it does it again. I just hope that things pull together and FF goes back to its seemingly bug-free self.
JBot
Attached are two pics, the first (start_CPU_peg.jpg) is what my system monitor recorded the processor usage at when the peg started. It looks like it pegged one core, then started another thread that pegged the other. The other pic is end_CPU_peg.jpg, when I closed FF about 30 seconds later and the processor usage went back to normal.
I will go you one better than that. Running Lightwave on my computer seems to have allowed it to defy certain laws of physics. See the image below. I am running a Dual 3.00GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Macintosh Pro (ie. four processors). With all four processors maxed out, I should be running at 400% CPU utilization (4 processors running at 100% utilization). But this software is SOOOO amazingly cool that I can actually get an extra 8% out of each processor! Apparently, the software included a little known “wormhole feature” that allows the computer to suck extra unused cycles away from other dimensions and transport them here for my use. I knew this new computer was good, but this is a level of service that I never expected!
I don’t know about 100% CPU usage, but I’ve been having other problems with Firefox. Half the time I start it up, it comes up with a message saying that there is a problem with the flash player and recommends closing firefox. Regardless of whether I close it or not (since eventually it just ceases to function), when I try to re-open it, it says that there is already an instance of Firefox running, and won’t allow it to open another window. I either have to close Firefox through the task manager, or restart windows. This has been happening for over a month now, and even though we recently updated both Firefox and the Flash player, it still has this problem.
I’m sitting here with a 3ghz P4 w/HT laptop thinking its getting hot, but I don’t think I could even be near something like that!
I’ve been using Firefox for about a year now, and I’ve never had any problems when I didn’t have a beta version. FF2 had some issues, but I haven’t had any problems since the last update, except for memory leak.
Go to this link http://www.computertalkwithtab.com/ click on fourms and post your questions. These guys are great. You can also listen to their show live on the internet most Saturday mornings by going to www.wtic.com (seems to work better with IE right know) click on listen live they are on from 10am to 12 noon eastern.
Umm…what am I missing here? Where did the first line come from?
I saw more forum threads regarding how FF interacts with the flash player than I can count. I would guess it’s one of those things where you need luck to get it going (the other one of those I know about is USB to Serial drivers…but that’s a story for another day). Google it and you’ll see what I mean.
I was thinking about posting on the Tech Support Guy forums, too. I think I’ll do that.
Yahoo Pool? Seriously? That’s almost as lame as an NFL sim game…
EDIT:I was joking! Don’t kill me! Please have mercy
I get every one of those problems, but not that often. I don’t know why. Have you tried completely uninstalling Firefox and installing again, instead of just updating it?
Just to answer your question as a PC user since 8086 2MHz. The new Apple computers run on Core Duo Intel CPU’s so they are as much a PC (x86) as any other. They just come with a different OS and WMI BIOS. These machines can dual boot into Windows XP/Vista run like a normal PC except the single mouse button. Also, OSX is a port of BSD which is unix based and can control devices on alot lower level than you can in an NT based OS like 2000 / XP. After having used windows forever I really like the feel of OSX its easy to buzz around in. There are alot of good freeware OSX apps and it can run all the freeware windows apps in wine, plus all the freeware unix apps.
EDIT AGAIN: Do Macs have serial ports? I somehow doubt it. And I hate USB to Serial adapters…
I just ordered a SIIG 3/4 Cardexpress to RS232 it should be just as fast as a onboard UART. Apples don’t have serial ports but neither does most of the laptops and desktops you would purchase today.
Sheesh, I steer away from 100% neutral posts for one minute to joke a bit, and everyone wants to smack me…sorry to those whose nerves I struck–I didn’t mean it like that.
Everyone has a right to their own opinion, buying an Apple today is more like just buying a Dell or an HP. Where when they were using PowerPC, it was more of a commitment to a lifestyle.
I didn’t realize firefox had these bugs… Well, IMO it’s still way better than IE7.
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I drool over what macs can do with video editing… the ease of use, and speed. Really its just because its built in to the OS. I still envy you Dave.
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Ye i can believe it, sometimes i got 96%… which sucks but i usualy end task it and continue on:D… to be honest… i really dont care about it spiking ever once in a while cuz FireFox… is ten times better then IE!!
Mac OS X is very customizable, partly because of its UNIX under prints. Look at http://www.macosxhints.com/ and http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ for examples. There are many more websites out there that might focus on a particular subject. Lots of customization stuff is done at the CLI level with the terminal, but there are some apps that do some of that stuff. Two in particular are onyx and Shape Shifter. One thing I also do is to put my mac into verbose mode. Verbose mode tells everything that is being done at startup, and gives you a good indicator if there is a problem. There is also a lot of freeware for mac os x, they might be different software from windows but there is most likely an equivalent available. Fink and Darwin Ports provide lots of UNIX packages (source/binaries). Also there is a large developer base that provides decent software for free/low price. Sites like http://www.macupdate.com and http://www.versiontracker.com have a good collection.
Macs never came with built in serial ports. Before USB they had their own proprietary “printer & modem ports” Serial is an old and obsolete port. Only a few embedded devices still use it. I have only used one usb to serial cable with my cell phone, and it was a bit of a pain to work with.
Okay, I’m just going to do this, it needs to be done:
I’m sorry for making the immature comment about Macs “sucking” and about Yahoo Pool being lame. I don’t know why I posted these comments; I know they hurt people, and I apologize for this. I am not qualified to mention anything about Macs because I have not used one for very long; I have no idea what I might be missing. And I’ve never played Yahoo Pool in my life. So both could be sweet; I was just being immature.
With that out of the way:
Re: the Mac thing: I am more convinced (after some much needed research) that Macs are really capable machines, and I may buy one when I get more money. I will try to find a friend who has a Mac and try it out.
Re: why I hate USB to serial adapters: Windows. It’s pretty ironic, I know. If I don’t have the right drivers, Windows will crash, horrendously. And I will bet (I don’t know this) that a Mac will just chuck the bad driver out and keep running as Windows should. A real serial port, at least when it comes to Windows, is much easier to manage than a USB to serial adapter.
Everyone has a right to their own opinion, buying an Apple today is more like just buying a Dell or an HP. Where when they were using PowerPC it was more of a commitment to a lifestyle.
I’m beginning to see that and I’m considering getting a Mac. Just goes to show you how wrong the crowd can be.
I’m sorry if this post seems overly dramatic. I know it doesn’t need to be. It ruffles my feathers when I ruffle other people’s feathers, especially if I didn’t mean to.
Sorry.
JBot
PS. I might try Opera. I’ve had other people tell me it’s faster, but, like Macs, I haven’t tried it for more than a few days, and that wasn’t fair–I was running it on my old laptop. I’ll give it another chance.
