In this article I want to tell you about solving the problem of freezing Firefox browser caused by (paradoxically) by the plugin-container.exe process. I will briefly talk about what plugins are (at least in the browser) why plugin-container.exe processes are needed and how to disable Plugin Container for Firefox... Read all about this further in the article.

What is a plugin?

Plugin (eng. plugin, from plug in - connect) is a separate program module (part of the program) that allows content to be displayed on a web page that cannot be displayed using a browser. These include: video, audio, online games, presentations, and more. Plugins are created and distributed by the developers of these data formats. For example, currently the most popular plugins are Adobe Flash, Quicktime, Silverlight, etc.

What is plugin-container.exe?

Starting with version 3.6.4, Firefox has the ability to load each such plugin via plugin-container.exe, i.e. separate from the main process firefox.exe. Thus, if one of the plugins crashes, the browser will continue to work.

The problem is that this approach requires slightly more computer resources. Otherwise, there may be some stuttering and some brakes when loading and running Firefox. Thus, in the case of low-power computers, some laptops or netbooks, it makes sense to disable Plugin Container for Firefox.

How to disable plugin-container.exe in Firefox?

Well, if you decide to try disabling plugin-container.exe, let's figure out how to do it. The simplest option is as follows:

1. Open your browser and write in the address bar: about: config- press Enter.
2. On the warning page that appears, click the button " I promise I'll be careful!»
3. On the opened page Firefox settings, in field " Filter"Write: dom.ipc.plugins.enabled - the required variables (or one variable) will be filtered automatically. Change their values ​​from TRUE to FALSE. To do this, place the cursor on the desired line and double-click on it (twice in a row, quickly).

The problem is that in older versions of Firefox, on Windows Vista and older it may not work. To disable plugin-container.exe, you need to create a system variable MOZ_DISABLE_OOP_PLUGINS... How to do it?

1. We press the button " Start» (the one in the lower left corner of Windows) and go to " Control Panel».
2. In the window that opens, find and click " System» (computer icon with a check mark).
3. In the opened window (in the left column) find and click the link “ Additional system parameters". If necessary, let us continue with the task.
4. In the opened window "System Properties" (on the tab “ Additionally») find and click the button " Environment parameters ...»
5. In the "Environment Variables" window that opens, in the " System Variables", Click the button" Create ...».
6. In the "New system variable" window that opens, in the "Variable name" field, write: MOZ_DISABLE_OOP_PLUGINS, and in the "Variable value" field write: 1 , press the button " OK».

For the changes to take effect, restart your computer.

How do I disable Protected Mode in Flash Player?

It is noteworthy that some plugins may work fine. only via plugin-container.exe. In particular, such a problem may arise with the plugin Adobe Flash 11.3 and older, because of protected mode... By the way, for many, this mode freezes Firefox when opening any page with flash content.

How can I turn it off? To do this, you need to write: ProtectedMode = 0 - to file mms.cfg which is located in the directory:

• For Windows 32bit: C: \ windows \ system32 \ macromed \ flash
• For Windows 64bit: C: \ windows \ syswow64 \ macromed \ flash

If the file mms.cfg there is no - create it. It is noteworthy that for this you may need to create it on a writable location and only then copy it to the specified directory.

If Plugin Container for Firefox is disabled, note that the plugin.scan.plid.all variable with the FALSE value disables scanning of system paths. Thus, in order for Firefox to use the Flash plugin, you need to copy its files to the Plugins folder, which is located in the folder with Firefox installed.

That's all for me. I hope that the information provided in the article will help you solve the problem. Thanks for attention. Good luck!

Plugins are loaded separately from Firefox, allowing the main Firefox process to stay open if a plugin crashes. This article explains what plugin-container is for.

Table of Contents

What is a plugin?

A plugin is a piece of software that displays Internet content that Firefox is not designed to display. These usually include video, audio, online games and presentations that are made in proprietary formats. Plugins are created and distributed by the companies that make those proprietary formats. Some common plugins are Adobe Flash, Java and Silverlight. For more information on plugins, see Use plugins to play audio, video, games and more.

What is plugin-container.exe?

Each plugin is loaded separately from Firefox in a plugin-container .exe process, allowing the main Firefox process ( firefox.exe) to stay open if a plugin crashes. There are as many plugin-container .exe processes as plugins launched since the Firefox session startup. For more information on plugin crashes, see Send plugin crash reports to help Mozilla improve Firefox.

Having problems?

We all use browsers, and I think it is not worth explaining to anyone what plugins (add-ons) are and why they are needed. But not everyone knows that their work directly affects the productivity of the computer. How exactly? In this we will figure it out now.

In order to provide resilience to crashes, the Mozilla Firefox developers have made each plugin run in a separate process (the so-called plugin container). Thus, if one of them crashes, Mozilla itself and other add-ons work.

Great, but these processes slow down the entire system and the browser very much.

Where to see the work of "plugin container.exe"

By pressing the control buttons “Ctrl + Shift + Delete” open the task manager, go to the processes.

As you can see, you have it connected, Firefox is “slowing down” because of it. Now let's talk about how to change this.

How to disable “plugin-container for firefox”

In order to disable the plugin container, you must:

As you can see now the value and “true” has changed to “false”. That is, the on state became off.

Important! Sometimes other lines appear:

• | dom.ipc.plugins.enabled |;
• | dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll |;
• | dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll |;
• | dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll |;
• | dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll |;

They also need to be switched. These files are only available in Firefox up to Generation 4.

And if I have a slightly older version of Mozilla

In this case, there is only one way - to create a system variable.

This article will certainly be useful to you. If you installed the add-on, and after that the browser began to freeze or take a long time to load, then the reason is in the separation of processes and you need to perform one of the actions described above. Once you complete it, you will immediately notice the change.

The developers have completely discontinued support for NPAPI-based plugins. Only the Adobe Flash player is still in production as it is required to play media content.

What is Plugin

The plug-in is an additional utility that reproduces audio and video materials, indispensable for online games and presentations that are inaccessible to the Internet browser Firefox, since their creation is based on special patented formats. These utilities work as additional processes. In cases of plugin crash, the main process search engine Firefox will not be affected, the user will not lose important data.

Plugin-container.exe

Sometimes users personal computers are interested in Plugin container for Firefox, what it is and what to do in case of errors. The fact is that when a task is launched in the Firefox browser, its own plugin is launched. A new process "plugin-container.exe" is created. The number of similar processes is equal to the number of utilities running with the launch of an Internet browser. If one of the plugins crashes, this will not affect the work of the search engine itself. As a rule, restarting the problematic utility will fix the problem.

A huge number of processes are running in the system simultaneously. Some of them are system, others are user-defined. The difference between the two lies in the software they serve. The article will discuss the process from the second category - the plugin-container.exe plugin.What is it, what it is for and whether it can be disabled - you will learn this and much more from the article.

What is a plugin?

But before proceeding with the consideration of the plugin-container.exe plugin itself, it is worth giving the very definition of this term. Let's also make a remark, saying that we are talking about plugins for browsers. So, this process belongs directly to the Firefox web browser.

A plugin is separate from the main application software which is modular. Its main task is to display the elements of the site page that the browser itself cannot work with (audio, video, presentations, etc.).

Having figured out the main definition, you can go directly to the description of the process itself.

Plugin-container.exe Windows process - what is it?

As we said, plugin-container.exe is a plugin for the Firefox browser. It is required to run other plugins separately from the browser. This allows Firefox to continue working even if the extension throws an error.

However, this approach also has disadvantages. One of which is the large expenditure of computer power to ensure the operation of this system. If the PC has powerful hardware, then there will be no freeze at the moment of opening the web browser, but in a weak computer it is very noticeable, up to a complete freeze in case of a critical overload of the central processor.

In such cases, it is wise to disable the process. We will describe how to do this further in the text.

How to disable plugin-container.exe

We found out that you can reduce the load on the processor by disabling the process, but you should be aware that after that you will not be able to use plugins in the browser until the service is started again. Nevertheless, let's go directly to how to disable the process if plugin-container.exe loads the system.

1. Start Firefox web browser.
2. Click on the address bar and enter the following text into it: "about: config" (without quotes).
3. Press the Enter key to go to the browser settings menu.
4. A warning message will appear. To make it disappear and you can continue the configuration, you need to click "I promise I will be careful!".
5. On the page, find the field named "Filter" and enter the following text into it: "dom.ipc.plugins.enabled" (without the quotes).
6. Only those processes that are associated with plugin-container.exe will remain in the list.
7. Change their values ​​from TRUE to FALSE. To do this, just double-click the left mouse button on the process line.

After that, the process will not be involved in the work of the browser, respectively, the load on the processor will significantly decrease.

Create a custom variable

We know that plugin-container.exe is a process that can be disabled on a computer to improve its performance, even more, the instructions on how to do this were given above. Unfortunately, if you are using Windows Vista or more old version Firefox browser, this method may not work. But there is a second method - you need to create a special system variable:

1. Open the "Control Panel". There are a huge number of ways to do this, but the easiest way is to search through the system with this name and select the item of the same name in the results.
2. In the window that appears, find the "System" item and click on it.
3. In the new window that appears, on the sidebar, click on the "Advanced options" link.
4. In the "System Properties" window, go to the "Advanced" tab, where click on the "Environment Settings" button.
5. In the System Variables area, click the New button.
6. A small window will appear with two input fields. In the first, enter the value "MOZ_DISABLE_OOP_PLUGINS" (without quotes), and in the second - "1" (without quotes).
7. Click OK.

You can close all windows. The process will be disabled after restarting the computer.

How to disable Protected Mode

We found out what to do if plugin-container.exe loads the processor, but if you disable this process, then all plugins will stop working, in particular Flash Player, and it is necessary, at least, in order to view videos on sites. Now we will tell you what needs to be done so that it continues its work, even after disabling plugin-container.exe.

1. If you are using 32-bit operating system, open the system drive, go to the "Windows" folder, then to "System32", then to "macromed" and finally to "Flash".
2. If you are using 64-bit Windiows, then instead of the "System32" folder, you need to go to the "SysWOW64" folder, the rest of the path remains the same.
3. Open the file "mms.cfg". If you do not find it in the folder, then create a new text document with this extension.
4. Enter the line "ProtectedMode = 0" into the file (without quotes).
5. Save your document.

After that, the Flash Player plugin will start even with the process disabled.

Conclusion

As a result, we figured out that plugin-container.exe is a Firefox browser plugin process that allows you to run other plugins separately from the browser. It is also important that with a strong load on CPU it can be turned off. However, it should be borne in mind that after that it will be impossible to use browser extensions. We hope the article was useful for you, and you found the answers to your questions.