How to Permanently Disable Firefox Plugin Container.exe Process in Windows

Firefox is my favorite browser and despite the fact that it consumes heavy memory, I still love using it. This is because of the wide variety of add-ons and the feel good factor which I never found in Google Chrome or any other browser.

If you are a Firefox 3.6 user, there is some good news though. The folks at Mozilla have made a few changes in the way Firefox handles the plugins and add-ons. The add-ons now run under a separate process known as plugin-container.exe which can be seen from Windows task manager, as shown below:

Firefox 3.6 Plugin Container

The plugin container process is separated from the main Firefox process to ensure that the browser does not crash if any of the plugin stops responding. But nevertheless, the plugin-container.exe process itself consumes a lot of memory (25K on my Windows7).

If you want to permanently disable the plugin container process in Firefox, follow these simple steps:

1. Type about:config in the address bar, hit “Enter’ and click on “I will be careful, I promise” (screenshot)

2. Type dom.ipc in the filter field and you will see the following options being listed

Disable Firefox Plugin Container process Forever

4. Right click an entry and select “Toggle” to change the value of the entry from True to False and vice versa.

5. Reset all entries to False but keep the first and last entries to True.

Disable Firefox Plugin Container Process

You are done, restart Firefox and open up Windows task manager to see that the plugin container process is disabled. (see screenshot)

Also check this about config trick which will enable all the disabled add-ons caused due to a Firefox update.

Written by Amit Banerjee on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

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kai

didnt work here..
still comes :(
wanda

Hi, it worked for me. A number of other sites have everything set to false, how come?
wanda

Oops-forgot to say thank you for your help.
Plug in is a hog –and slows down the whole system.
http://puneetg.wordpress.com/ Puneet Garg

thanks a lot . it worked
http://www.ampercent.com Amit Banerjee

Thanks Punnet for the comment.
http://Kamalajk@gmail.com Kamal

Thx, i got rid of this file atlast
nimd4

Same here, kai; something’s wrong.. Anyway, documentation’s @ kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins & to speed things up, there’s another setting (dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs :)) @ kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins#Disabling_crash_protection
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/2074/20132329.jpg Roshdy

thnx a lot memory usage now is 138.640 b4 it was 250.135
http://www.wearechangeportugal.com DigitalJedi

Hi, I tried your config tricks & it worked. Before there were 2 process (FF & PluginContainer), around 140 mB each, now only one (FF) but RAM jumped to 200 MB… I have 8 tabs open (before & after the tricks)… any idea how can I lower the RAM for FF? Thanks
http://www.ampercent.com Amit Banerjee

@Digitaljedi: You can try the faster fox add-on to reduce Firefox memory usage
Nathan

“The plugin-container.exe process itself consumes a lot of memory (25K on my Windows7).”

24,320K == 25M != 25K

Also, I call shenanigans on the screenshot. “firefox.exe 4,52,712 K” Uh…
http://kartunmania.com Indonesian cartoon

Thanks a lot.. :)
nox

Holly smokes! 4 gigs eaten by Firefox?

so, my usage of resources is much better then.. http://quisnox.deviantart.com/art/This-Is-Why-I-Hate-Firefox-175827076
booboo

worked 4 me
Paz

Thx alot! Plugin-container chomped 1.5gb alone!
BV

Amit Banerjee’s method only disables Crash protection for Individual items:

* dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll (Microsoft Silverlight)
* dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll (Apple QuickTime)
* dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (Adobe Flash)

————
So, to properly completely disable Firefox Plugin-Container.exe one must also set the first and last in the list to FALSE.
* dom.ipc.plugins.enabled (main/general Plugin-Container plugin call)
* dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll (NPAPI test plugin)
Jake

Yeahh, stress over now. Completely overloaded my CPU 4 times and caused my comp to crash x4, thanks for the help!
ZLL

Well, at least we know that firefox is stable its just the proprietary plug-ins that cause the problems.
http://www.localrainmakermarketing.com Mark

I think you showed me the solution. FF did reboot quicker and is not freezing up so far. I like FF the best but have hated just how S L O W it can become at times.

Thanks

Mark
http://www.saltlife.org saylife

Every time i get this bug i come here to find the solution also the dwm that i see in the “dwm” in your task manager thus can be annoying as well. good post
Paul

That worked great. It was using 52k on mine!
Janette

@BV: So you are saying that they should all be false …
http://www.magnetictrainer.info Paul T

Thank you for the tip. After my 4 GB memory computer crashed a few times, I’ve followed what you have said and thus far no problems. Keep the tips coming.
http://www.freewebs.com/conniefrancis John Donatelli Jr

After I use Firefox and close it, I try going into it again and get a message that Firefox is already running. However, it is not up on my screen. I have to go in and end the process in order to use Firefox again. I don’t like doing this all the time. Will changing this plugin container stop this from happening?
http://www.ampercent.com Amit Banerjee

@John: The plugin container process is separate from the main Firefox process which consumes the maximum memory. Killing the plugin container.exe will not solve your problem, you have to use Windows task manager anyway
http://www.freewebs.com/conniefrancis John Donatelli Jr

Thanks, Amit. I was hoping there was a way not to keep opening the task manager. Thanks anyway.
What a relief

Worked for me as well. Thanks!
Minxie

The stupid plugin-container.exe keep crashing causing all kinds of issues for me…. will try this and see if it works… thanks for the help! :)
Minxie

YAY!!!!! FF is working better, faster and smoother! I knew something was wrong but couldnt figure it out! THANK YOU so much for posting this! I love FF and was getting quite frustrated with it! Now I can have my happy co-existence with FF again! :)
leo

It doesn’t work. The process does not run anymore, but firefox.exe starts workink like it. In my computer, consumed 800MB of RAM before crashing. Right now, after 4 minutes running firefox it’s consuming 2-3 MB of RAM per second: 550 MB and growing… X(
Jim

A big LOL at this…
When this process shows 99% cpu usage it’s the plugin that is loaded inside it, that eats 99% of your cpu.
When this process shows it uses 250MB memory, it’s the plugin using them…
If you disable it like the article suggest guess what you are doing… just moving this 99% and 250MB memory to your main Firefox process… congratulations!
Andi

Thank you so much for this. You actually fixed two problems I was having. I thought I was having a java issue with certain games loading via firefox but turns out it had something to do with the plug in container process. So thank you x 2! :)
Teresa

this trick has saved me 2 nervous breakdowns, one on my previous laptop and one on this brand new win7 one. only i was wondering, i had heard or read that win7 had somehow cured the problem of the plugin-thingy eating memory and causing crashes? previous laptop was xp, so i was not suspecting same issue with this new machine with win7 but it APPEARS to have the same issue. i just killed it in about:config so i am expecting the cure just like i got in xp. SO THANKFUL for wise geeks like you who care enough to share, FOR NOTHING!!
Wonnerber Snerr

This may be a silly question, but what is the purpose of plugin-container.exe? What are the side-effects of disabling it (there must be something, else it wouldn’t exist)?
Clarence

Well I upgraded to the new Firefox & like the rest of you found out about the plugin-container.exe & found this web site & after I it now sometimes when I try to exit out of Firefox it won’t let me like it’s frozen but when I open task manager it says still running but it won’t let me click the red x or even on the bottom where the mini window is @ it won’t do nothing but just sit there I don’t know if I might have to reinstall Firefox or something but I was just wondering if any body else is having the same problem…
Nuri

I second Wonnerber Snerr’s second question (no pun intended!) If I permanently disable the plugin-container, won’t I have problems to see animations/videos/games/websites running on flash?
almost feletd FF

Simple guide:
the above SS is incoreect, after searching IPC, sett all values to false

I almost deleted FF due to this frakkin plugin container…… brouth my pc to hold and to crashes, I thought I have a virus, and then suspected new antivirus and firewall………. well thansk heaps, now i can use FF as before
kavinda

Thanks alot mate
John Holmering

Oh yes!!!! Nightmare removed!!Every time I had a problem, pull up the task manager and there it would be, sucking the memory lifeblood out of my PC.
Joe

I am also waiting for Snerr’s question to be answered. If we disable plugin-container, what is the trade-off? It’s there for a purpose so removing it will cause what negatives?
http://blog.tomekson.com/ Tomek

My FF 3.6.15 needs 660+ MB RAM to run about 12 tabs :/
And the plugin container consumes another 200MB RAM so imagine that how annoying the speed is and I’m using just a few plugins (Grease monkey with 3 small scripts, AdBlock+, Colorzilla)

I’m using Win7 and I have 6GB RAM and nearly one GB takes FF itself!!

I hope the new FF 4 will be released next week and will solve this.
Anyway I’ll try some of your about:config tricks to save some RAM for other applications on my PC :)

Thanks!
http://makeqrcodesonline.com Terry

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The plugin container has been bugging the crap out of me for a few months. Consuming loads of memory and crashing.

Your tutorial is excellent and I see why it is at the top of Google search:)

Terry
Chimel

The about:config screenshot is a bit different for Firefox 4 now, the nptest.dll option has disappeared. I wonder with this “test” DLL now gone if maybe plugin-container.exe is now safer and does not need to be removed.
Tal

Much appreciated. Running a Dual Core was supposed to be faster than my older system. This should certianly help, thankyou
Roland Lindgren

I am using FF 4.0.1 Can I remove plugin-container.exe without creating any problems?
Roland.
Roland Lindgren

I should add that my Computer froze and I couldnt get anything going with the cursor. after a few restarts and F8 went into safe mode and from there system restore back a few days and my comp. started working again. don’t know for sure if the problem was plugin container but after got it running ok I opened task mngr. and noticed it was using 100% CPU and freezing there.
Roland.
Chimel

If it’s using 100% CPU, you should certainly disable it.
Just set “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled” to false in about:config, then you can reenable it any time you want. I don’t think I ever will. The irony is that plugin-container.exe is supposed to provide a sand-box for plugins, i.e. a safe place where a plugin crash will not crash the whole Firefox, just the plugin process, but it seems that the opposite is happening. I haven’t had Flash or an other plug-in crash on me, so I don’t need this extra process that slows down the browser.
http://none.homeuse Roland Lindgren

I did what you suggested and still have plugin-container.exe appearing 2 times now instead of 4 times in task Mngr.

here is what about:config is showing now:

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled;true
dom.ipc.plugins.java.enabled;false
dom.ipc.plugins.processLaunchTimeoutSecs;45
dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs;45
Joe

I did everything suggested and still have a frozen computer sometimes and still is running at or near 100%.
Chimel

@Roland Set your first setting to false.
@Joe What’s running at 100%, firefox.exe or plugin-container.exe? If the latter, you didn’t disable it: There shouldn’t be any plugin-container.exe process left if you set plugins.enabled to false.

After you change the settings and close Firefox, make sure all the firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe processes have disappeared from Task Manager before restarting Firefox, or you’ll still be using the old settings.
Joe

@Chimel-I got rid of both and when I restarted thinking all was well, FF shot up to 100%. Before plug-in and FF shared the load but it still added up to 100%. So, anyway you slice it I am ON OCCASION still up to 100% and ON OCCASION my computer freezes up. This happens when watching videos but NOT all the time.
badoink

@Joe
The trade-off obviously is (as written in the article) that if for example flash crashes your whole FF process will crash instead of just the plugin.
I think there are only advantages to leaving this enabled.
kevs

Thanks dude.. im using cometbird.. it worked! i dont really post comments on the informations on the net that i found useful… but this one is the best.. you solved the problem im having for a long a time.. thanks man! you rock!
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