Large Memory Usage in Flash Player 11.3.300.257

[Guest]

Jeromie Clark wrote:

Hi,

You should see two FlashPlayer_11_3_300_257.exe processes.  This is how Protected Mode in Firefox works.  It does *not* double memory usage. 

Having two FlashPlayerPlugin_11_3_300_257.exe processes may not double memory usage but your 'low-integrity heavy-lifter' process definitely has massive memory usage issues that need fixing.

As I type, this process is using 792MB of RAM all by itself.

Before the Flash update, Firefox's own 'plugin-container.exe' only ever used under 200MB at the very most  This is clearly unacceptable memory hogging by your new Flash process.

[daniel_brooks_1]

Flash Player is being a memory hog.
I log into facebook and go to any app using flash player and on average it is using 650mb of ram.
that's less than 10% of my total systems available ram , which normally by no means should be an issue except for the fact that it's causing lag. There's no issues with the connection at 15,000 dl and 1.5 ul and as per usual with facebook there's a 54% of a second latency when pinged. Issue is the lag that is being caused by the total of two chrome.exe processes in task manager totaling  in at 41% memory usage causing LAG LAG  LAG  making most games unplayable because of this.

[Guest]

I had the same problem with my

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[Guest]

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[vertex11]

I just wanted to note that this problem occurs regularly for me on a new Windows 7 machine with 16 GB of RAM with the latest Firefox and the latest FlashPlayer plugin "and" I never play games at all.  Just normal web sites with flash content.  I basically have to keep Task Manager Up all the time and kill the Flash process when things bog down.  And they bog down quite often with 2-6 tabs running.  It is obviously the advertisers and their content causing the problem.  The browser vendors and Adobe appear to be helpless to deal with modern web pages with lots of advertiser content.  As we all know, this advertiser content "is" the business model for most web sites, and will stay that way likely far into the future. 

[ericshawn]

But there's gotta be a way for Adobe to program flash to dump all the garbage these ads are loading on.  Like an auto purge every couple of hours (or however long the user sets the preference).  So that the plugin is always running optimally, without us having to  constantly be keeping an eye out for it.  I'm willing to deal with regular sites loading a little slower, just to avoid my whole system stopping to an inch by inch crawl.

[redwolf28508]

I have this same issue as well and all I am doing is opening several tabs for different news sites that have flash content in the page. One thing I have noticed in my cases is it happens more on news pages that have there video set to auto play when you load the page.

[obgamer]

This chat might be dead since the last response was a year ago. Still, I've been watching Flash get out of control with every new revision. OK, yes I have an underpowered machine by current "standards". It's a Mid 2010 Mac Mini, 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo (still not too bad) and only 4Gb of memory (yeah, on the low side). Still, it's astounding seeing that one Flash Player process - yes, one OS process - wants over ==> 1Gb ==< of memory, particularly on a machine with only 4Gb (hopefully enough emphasis here). You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. Most heavy-duty applications don't use that much, and this is a frickin' browser plug-in. I recently had to uninstall Flash on my MBP, which has 8Gb of memory, as it kept on crashing both Safari and Firefox.

Trying to stay calm, there must be some degree of remediation for this. I read earlier in this chat that 'Flash only takes a certain percentage' of memory. Umm, OK ... 25% sounds a touch excessive.

Please advise.

[ericshawn]

Perhaps Adobe gets kick backs with all the ads posted that require Flash to show.  Hence why they haven't done anything new.  Because 9 versions later, this is issue is still alive and well.  That's the thing with money.  The more companies want it, the more they are willing to sacrifice many things to attain it.  Including customer dissatisfaction, and poor quality of product.  Adobe Flash is like Facebook, they've cornered their market.  That's why I'm hoping HTML 5 comes to full fruition, that Flash will no longer be need at all, for ANY site.  Time to step it up Adobe if you want Flash to survive.  Better to make some money, than no money at all.  😉

[ericshawn]

Lol!  I think I have you all beat.  So this seems to happen to me after every update (which is why I try not to update, unless I really, really have to).  So the last 3 updates (4 if you include the one I skipped before the last one), my system would run extremely sluggish.  Like molasses slow.  I'm running a Mac Pro 3,1 (8 core Xeon), with 10GB or ram, and a 512MB GeForce 8800GT GPU.  So there is no reason why my system would get so bogged down.  Then I would open up Activity Monitor, which shows ALL activities going on at the moment on my system.  And wouldn't you know, Shockwave Flash is at the top of the list, hogging 3.25GB or ram.  3.25GB!!  So naturally, I would force quit the activity within Activity Monitor, then BAM my system is running happy again.  UNTIL I update again, then I would go through the same b.s.  For frame of reference, I updated the plugin 2 days ago.

I'm not playing games online.  In fact, most things I do online on my desktop system, are very basic things.  I check email, I check Facebook, sometimes Instagram and Twitter, I do Google searches, and a handful of sites I check regularly.  I'm pretty sure it's not the sites.  Because once I do a force quit on Shockwave Flash (2.0 for this version), it doesn't happen again.  Yet, flash still works on those sites.  Only happens after every update.  A fresh install of the lastest plugin.  It's like Flash is saying "hey look! fresh powder!", so it hogs the "hill", and rips it all up so no one else can enjoy the fresh snow.  Until they are booted from the mountain. lol  Only to happen again when I update.  Pretty frustrating.

Mind you, I primarily use Firefox.  Explorer has been gone from the Mac system for over 10 years.  Chrome isn't as customizable as Firefox.  And Safari, well, I've never been a fan of Safari.  Firefox...we have a love hate relationship.  Firefox is a memory hog too. I have to restart it every couple of days, as it would start at 300MB when first launch.  By the second day, it would be using up 1GB.  The most it's used up before I restart it, is about 1.7GB.  But nowhere near the 3GB+ with Flash plugin.

So my questions are, why does it suck up so much initially?  But doesn't after it's forced quit, and the sites visited are always the same?  AND it's still working even after a force quit.

[Kratika Agarwal]

Hi,

Thanks for reporting the issue.could you please let us know all the steps to reproduce the issue:

1) what Flash URL/ site are you using?

2)What is the Browser and Flash player version?

Thanks

[wags9452]

I would like to add to ericshawn's post. I have only recently noticed this problem so I'm not sure how long it's been an issue with Flash. I listen to Internet radio all day at work, typically ESPN, but the problem occurs on any page with a flash based audio stream. plugin-container.exe launches around 60,000 K. It holds for a little while but quickly starts spooling up. It continues to consume memory until all available RAM is used up at which point the plugin crashes. The attached screen grab shows 3 hrs of radio play. The flash plugin container is nearly at 4GB of memory. 5 minutes after this screen grab it has increased to 4,141,196 K. Its resources are expanding at nearly 1MB a second now so it is clearly growing parabolically. The browser process is also effected to a lesser degree. firefox.exe seems to expand at a slower rate than that of the plugin but is still bloated.

My workstation runs Windows 7 with 12GB of RAM. Firefox version 44.0, both 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions are effected. I've also tested IE and and get identical results with an iexplore.exe process. I have the latest Shockwave Flash plugin 20.0.0.286.

[ericshawn]

I think this is a combination of both the Flash Shockwave plugin and Firefox.  Imo, Firefox is very poor at memory management. As you concur, Firefox alone tends to use up a lot over a few days.  eg. After a restart of Firefox, it would start at 300MB of memory usage.  After 3 days of being on, it goes up to about 1.5GB of memory usage.  Then Shockwave goes from a mere few hundred KBs, to whatever RAM is left (mine has gone as high as 4GB, probably because that's all that's left).  Leaving my Mac Pro 8 core sputtering like it's from 1992 running today's software.  lol

The other thing I'm wondering, is why does Shockwave need to even be on.  Because when this happens, I quit the plugin within Activity Monitor, and sites that require a flash plugin still works normally.  And I no longer have issues with the plugin (until I restart my computer).  Firefox still sucks up memory though.  I also find interesting, when I use Chrome, I don't have these issues.  Or at least not that I notice to the degree under Firefox.  But even using Chrome, Shockwave still seems to hog a lot of memory, but not as bad as when I'm on Firefox.

[paradoxj7]

I am experiencing the same issue.  I am running Firefox version 44.0 with Shockwave Flash plugin version 20.0.0.286.

I have mostly experienced this issue playing Flash games.   I find that many games on armor.com cause this issue.  One of the most pronounced I've found is "Flight" at http://armorgames.com/play/7598/flight.

As the game goes is slows down and the Flash plugin-container.exe *32 process takes up more and more memory (at a rate of a up to 10MB every few seconds) until the plugin and/or Firefox crash and I have to force exit the program.  The memory is released when the game/tab is closed (see below):

This definitely seems to be a memory leak, improper memory dis-allocation situation.

[Guest]

Same here - think (sure) it´s a memory leak as it occurs after updating .286 version. I have 4 computer running WIN7 with Seamonkey (Firefox 42) and 1 running XP

After few minutes the memory-usage of flashplayer (only with the WIN7 computer so far) is moving straight on every second up to 2.700.000, first slowing down, then stopped working. Reproducable many times but not on all flash programs..  

..

[time32461435]

I had to quit using Firefox completely. On a Win7 desktop with 4GB of memory, Flash quickly claims over 1.5 GB.  With other applications running, I would complete run out of memory and the amount of swapping would freeze my desktop from time to time. I couldn't even close Firefox, I'd have to end it from Task Manager.  Firefox recently moved Flash into a the plugin-container.exe process. That didn't help, and if anything made it worse.  This is Firefox 45.0.2.  Internet Explorer 11 is isn't quite as unfriendly with Flash, but it has problem too. So now, I'm trying Chrome. Flash is out of control with Chrome too! Again, climbing to 1.5 GB at times! Developers need to abandon Flash, soon!  MSN.com is an absolute nightmare with the Flash ad garbage on every page.

[Guest]

I am running CyberFox (which gives 64-bit capability) over the latest version of FireFox.  FlashPlayer is bringing my whole computer to its knees on certain website. The worst is Alaska Dispatch New (ADN.com), the largest newspaper in the state -- on any news story (but I think not the frontpage). Another consistent offender is Salon.com.

My computer has 8 gb of memory (the max possible). I had the plug-in container taking 5gb today. When I kill the container with ProcessExplorer, I get instant relief. But the plug-in container comes back on and its memory usage climbs very rapidly (5-10 minutes) back to a high consumption. Also the CPU cycles zoom up and stay there. I becomes impossible to type (characters appear very slowly) and pages in other browser tabs then scroll very slowly and erratically, if at all.

This has been a problem for many months, but has gotten worse. ADN just completely redid its website, which is when the problem started occurring there.  FlashPlayer needs to incorporate defenses against poorly written websites, or ones that are "over the top" with images and memory hungry advertisements, or whatever else going on here.

[jeromiec83223024]

Flash Player is effectively a language runtime, much like Java.  The changes we make are low-level, generic changes that affect all existing content on the web.

In general, what's happening in these scenarios is a complex interplay between large ad insertion organizations (doubleclick, etc) and a wide array of smaller affiliate players downstream.  The actual insertion of the Flash content typically happens in JavaScript, and I looked at a similar problem yesterday where an advertisers script was just running in an infinite loop, inserting ads continuously until the browser tab crashed.

From Flash's perspective, each instance of an ad is a normal process.  It's the fact that JavaScript has instantiated 2000 of them which is the problem, but because Flash is an embedded asset in the page, it doesn't know about the global state or that there are 1999 other instances.  Alas, there's no such thing as idiot-proof, or if Jurassic Park is more your speed, "life will find a way". 

The browser vendors are taking significant steps to reign in bad behavior by content providers and ad networks, which is why we're seeing the themes on power saving and ad-blocking this year.  The browser is much better positioned to employe the kinds of heuristics necessary to prevent the side-effects from bad content at the intersection of JavaScript, Flash and the DOM.

In the meantime, you might consider employing an ad blocker.  Also, Firefox has a mainstream release-quality 64-bit browser now, and it implements a native 64-bit NPAPI sandbox, which solves some of the long-standing architectural inefficiencies related to Flash's effort to sandbox itself without support from the browser on 32-bit Firefox.  We don't test the *fox variants, but we are doing some level of testing on 64-bit Firefox, and while I don't think it matters in this particular instance, the feedback I'm getting from people that have suffered from long-standing performance and stability issues is that it's a huge improvement.

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