I've been using K-Meleon for about a year now. Although I installed it mainly because I was frustrated with the slowness of Firefox, I now think K-Meleon is actually better. It's now my browser of choice.

I'm running it on a slow machine (Celeron II 633 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB Hard disk, XP SP2)

I have one big problem, though. Whenever I visit a site with some flash on it for several hours (be it Youtube or any other website with the usual flash ads), K-Meleon seems to ask for more memory and, since I don't have much RAM, it soon starts to use the virtual memory, i.e. the hard disk. The free space on hard disk then usually starts to decline with time (some application seems to want to access the hard disk constantly). After a few hours the free space on Hard disk can be reduced by 300-600 MB, and when that happens K-Meleon is usually already a "Non-responding" application, or the whole system becomes terribly slow, so I have to restart the PC.

Can this memory leak be stopped in any other way besides restarting the system? If I look at the flash ads only for a few minutes this doesn't happen. I've also seen this happen with Firefox, so maybe it's a Gecko issue?

Quote
Faraox
Can this memory leak be stopped in any other way besides restarting the system? If I look at the flash ads only for a few minutes this doesn't happen. I've also seen this happen with Firefox, so maybe it's a Gecko issue?

No. Just a Flash issue. It's very hungry of memory.

But you don't need to restart the system, you only need to close and reopen K-meleon to free-up the memory.

In the other hand, you can configure how much Virtual Memory (pagefile.sys) must XP use through the Control Panel > System > Performance. But have in mind that XP need from start and without configure it, about 150MB of RAM. So... 256MB it's very low for a system like XP and you'll need a Virtual Memory size (pagefile.sys) quite huge. At least 400MB.

Just closing and re-opening K-meleon doesn't solve the issue. I tried it many times. Seems like, when this process starts the only way to return to the previous condition is to restart the system.

Again, this happens only if I leave an open tab with flash ads (even a paused Youtube page can do it) for more than half an hour.

I wouldn't mess with the pagefile size. All programs run ok, except this.

Quote
Faraox
Just closing and re-opening K-meleon doesn't solve the issue. I tried it many times. Seems like, when this process starts the only way to return to the previous condition is to restart the system.

Again, this happens only if I leave an open tab with flash ads (even a paused Youtube page can do it) for more than half an hour.

I wouldn't mess with the pagefile size. All programs run ok, except this.

When you re-open you cut the process of RAM demand. But you can't cut that when you visit a page with Flash, even stopped, paused, whatever, it will begin again.

The process is easy, I'll try to explain again.

If you have 100MB of RAM free and the program you are using (K-meleon with flash or whatever) needs more than 100MB it will transfer to the the pagefile what "it is not needed". If you set to the pagefile that the max size it's 200MB, it will grow until it reaches it.

I don't remember how XP manage pagefile. If it is like win9x, this is dynamically, change to fixed size. This won't solve the problem, but avoid the infinite grow of the pagefile.

The problem that comes with this practice it's that once it reaches the limit, it won't let you use more memory and it's related to your personal case. You have very LOW RAM for XP (as I said, XP uses over 150MB for itself)***. You should buy a new module. With 128MB or 256 it would be enough if you don't want to buy more

*** you can check how many RAM is using XP using the task manager.

Quote
JohnHell

The problem that comes with this practice it's that once it reaches the limit, it won't let you use more memory and it's related to your personal case. You have very LOW RAM for XP (as I said, XP uses over 150MB for itself)***. You should buy a new module. With 128MB or 256 it would be enough if you don't want to buy more

*** you can check how many RAM is using XP using the task manager.

It's around 83200 KB. That's under Task Maneger, Physical memory -> Available physical memory.

K-meleon uses about 43000 Kb, and I have very few other programs open now.

I know 256 MB is very little for today's standards. Actually I intend to buy an I7 machine with at least 6 GB soon, I suppose I won't have this problem then.

I thought this might be an issue that is somehow related to how much K-meleon allows flash to use available resources. I thought there might be some patch for flash or XP, but I guess it's all due to my extra slow machine.

Thanks for your help.

Quote
Faraox

I know 256 MB is very little for today's standards. Actually I intend to buy an I7 machine with at least 6 GB soon, I suppose I won't have this problem then.

That is not intelligent. I don't mean that a computer needs GB just XP needs a little more than what you have. 6GB it's a waste of money. With 3GB, nowadays, are just enough, even for games. Only if you install WinVista or Win7, and you plan to play, would be interesting, but still 6GB is more than what you need, what every normal user needs.

Quote
Faraox
I thought this might be an issue that is somehow related to how much K-meleon allows flash to use available resources. I thought there might be some patch for flash or XP, but I guess it's all due to my extra slow machine.

Nop. Plugins works at their own business so, if flash is buggy and needs more and more RAM is not your fault, your OS fault or K-meleon fault. It's Adobe fault.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2009 07:20PM by JohnHell.

Quote
JohnHell


I know 256 MB is very little for today's standards. Actually I intend to buy an I7 machine with at least 6 GB soon, I suppose I won't have this problem then.

That is not intelligent. I don't mean that a computer needs GB just XP needs a little more than what you have. 6GB it's a waste of money. With 3GB, nowadays, are just enough, even for games. Only if you install WinVista or Win7, and you plan to play, would be interesting, but still 6GB is more than what you need, what every normal user needs.

Actually I intend to use the new computer for video files editing, so some extra memory probably won't hurt.

Besides that, according to my observations (since 1996 when I started to use windows-based PCs), new programs and operating systems are ALWAYS written under the assumption that people will have more memory and more powerful machines.

Just take browsers as an example. How would a new version of Firefox or IE 8 run on a PC from, say, 1997? It probably wouldn't be able to run at all. Same with Microsoft Office, Photoshop etc. Today's Word essentially does the same thing as the Word from 1997, and people will use it in 99% cases for writing simple documents, but it probably won't run on a slow machine. In my opinion a lot of this is due to showmanship, unnecessary bells and whistles and sometimes bad coding. That's why I like K-meleon, as it's not following this path.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2009 07:42PM by Faraox.

Quote
Faraox
That's why I like K-meleon, as it's not following this path.

Welcome to the path of light

I agree with you, except that for video editing where you need more disk space than memory. I don't edit huge files, but with my 1.25GB I'm very satisfied.

You just need now to use Win2k, as I use, for the same reasons you give

I take this opportunity to recommend to those who play games and use win2k to visit this forum.

Browsers based on Gecko engines 1.8.x are really slow with recent versions of the flash reader plugin, so no ammount of fiddling with the pagefile on such a restricted system will change a great deal.

You can either downgrade the plugin, loosing compatibility with a lot of sites (for example, YouTube) or try to upgrade the Gecko to generation 1.9.x...

--- sig ---

Quote
foobarly
Browsers based on Gecko engines 1.8.x are really slow with recent versions of the flash reader plugin, so no ammount of fiddling with the pagefile on such a restricted system will change a great deal.

You can either downgrade the plugin, loosing compatibility with a lot of sites (for example, YouTube) or try to upgrade the Gecko to generation 1.9.x...

I don't get what the engine has to do here when a plugin takes control. They are two different things. Engine works on one side, the plugin works in the other. Totally at their own.

About the pagefile, you didn't read all or maybe you didn't understand. He is requesting to avoid the grow of the file, not for performance.

also try to run the flash plugin specifically for kmleoen by saving the npswf32.dll in kmeleon\plugins folder.. this way kmeleon will use that file instead of installed plugin in system which is generally better especially when running 2 different browsers on a flash website.. i think flash is handled slightly better when running directly from the browser plugins folder instead of the install approach.

you can download latest flash dll from http://kmext.sourceforge.net/mplug.htm
save npswf32.dll in kmeleon\plugins folder

Although it isn't the gospel, my advice originates from my empirical findings -- if you think differently, good for you then. I reported from my own experience and findings of K-Meleon, Firefox and Flock use. The lack of an established cientific explanation doesn't mean that there can't be one...

The problem I have with some of the advice given here is that sometimes one's being told his/her problems aren't real, proceding then to tell such hapless users how things should be... But, hey, you get what you paid for, right?

One excellent example is telling pagefile is independent of system capabilities, when its performance tuning is anything but linear, if you consider the trinome CPU/System Memory/Pagefile (size/location)...

--- sig ---

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2009 10:18AM by foobarly.

Quote
foobarly
Although it isn't the gospel, my advice originates from my empirical findings -- if you think differently, good for you then. I reported from my own experience and findings of K-Meleon, Firefox and Flock use. The lack of an established cientific explanation doesn't mean that there can't be one...

The problem I have with some of the advice given here is that sometimes one's being told his/her problems aren't real, proceding then to tell such hapless users how things should be... But, hey, you get what you paid for, right?

One excellent example is telling pagefile is independent of system capabilities, when its performance tuning is anything but linear, if you consider the trinome CPU/System Memory/Pagefile (size/location)...

Sorry? :s :-?

You were answering me, right?

Probably is my lack of some english words/clauses, or that you are criticizing me for a reason I don't get, but :s

If your answer is because I offended you, I'm very, very, very, very sorry. It wasn't my intention :-? (maybe due a lack of smileys)

I felt I needed to justify my advice, in case Faraox might think I was misleading him -- but I don't flatter myself to be as knowledgeable as other users around. No sweat anyways, no harm done... here's smilling back at you:

--- sig ---