For many people who use laptop with low memory capacity (RAM), opening more than 3 applications at the same time can really disrupt the whole operation of the laptop’s system. Take me as an example. Recently, I just bought a laptop (which I got from blogging) that has very low memory capacity, 256MB, and every time I open more than 4 heavy applications at the same time (e.g. Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Mozilla Firefox, Winamp), the one who suffers from this situation is the RAM capacity of my laptop. And as the result, my laptop runs in a very lag condition. Moreover, it is worsened by the increase of memory usage when I open many heavy web pages on Firefox browser.
As you may know, every time we access web page on Firefox browser, all the elements that support the interface of web page (e.g images, CSS, javascript, HTML codes, etc) will be automatically recorded on your Firefox memory, and this is called as cache. That’s why, if your laptop runs in very low memory capacity, the usage increase of web page elements will surely affect to the memory usage of Firefox as a whole. To make this simple, so every time you open big and heavy websites on Firefox, it will automatically increase the memory usage of Firefox. And thus, will lag the whole system of laptop.
If you face the same problem with I’m dealing right now, where your laptop suffers a lag condition because of the excessive uses of applications at the same time, and the increase of memory usage on Firefox web pages, this is the solution.
1. Open your Firefox
First things first, now run Mozilla Firefox on your computer.
2. Open the system configuration of Firefox
In the new window, now enter to the system configuration (config) of Firefox. To do this, in the address bar (i.e. the box where you can enter website address, say, www.google.com), now type the following address:
About:config
3. Enter the system configuration
When entering to the Firefox system configuration, you will be prompted with the message “This might void your warranty” which can affect to the stability, security and performance of Firefox. So you need to be sure that what you are gonna do next might affect to those 3 conditions about. Now press “I’ll be careful, I promise”.....................
4. Find all the cache configurations
As you can see on the top of the window, there is a filter box that can be utilized to search some specific configuration of the system. In this article, I just want to show you how to disable the cache functionality of Firefox, which will automatically remove the previous recorded cache on your Firefox. Now type the keyword “cache” on the filter box, and look around for the Preference Name below:
browser.cache.memory.enable
4. Edit the value
After locating the configuration of “browser.cache.memory.enable” now edit the value of this function by pressing it twice. By changing the value from “
true” to “
false”, you are about to disable the cache function on Firefox, which means, every time you open enter to the new page, the cache of the previous web page will be automatically removed from the Firefox system, and therefore, will decrease the memory usage of Firefox in your laptop memory (RAM).
5. Close the system configuration of Firefox
Okay now close the system configuration by closing that tab.
As you can see on Task Manager (right-click at the bottom taskbar > Task Manager > Processes), if it works perfectly, the memory usage of Firefox in your laptop’s memory will significantly decrease, and as the result, the memory usage of your laptop will be much more stable than before.
Anyway, if you want to revert back the system configuration of Firefox to the first condition, you can easily do it by repeating the steps above, and enable again the cache function on Firefox. Isn’t that simple?
