What is Plugin container for firefox service

[V S Rawat]

In my windows 7 Ultimate, ff 3.6.12, I checked my Windows task
manager, and found "plugin-container.exe" running.

it is located at
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugin-container.exe 16,856 bytes

task manager shows: File version 1.9.2.3951, size 0 bytes

Why is it running twice, with 3028k and 4308k Memory (private working
set) use, when there is a single instance of ff running?

In what conditions can this be stopped or blocked?

Thanks.
--
Rawat

[Chris Ilias]

There's an article for that here:
<http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/What+is+plugin-container>.

Basically, Firefox loads plugins in plugin-container.exe so that if the
plugin crashes it doesn't take Firefox down with it. Plus, before
plugin-container, if plugins would use a lot of memory, people would see
it in firefox.exe and think it was Firefox.

Some things to alleviate plugin memory use are:

* Make sure all your plugins are up to date. For that, use the Mozilla
Plugin Check tool <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/>.

* Disable any plugins you don't recognize/use. See
<http://ilias.ca/blog/2010/09/firefox-tip-disable-unused-plugins/>.

--
Chris Ilias <http://ilias.ca>
Mailing list/Newsgroup moderator