I had a very exciting day, or better, night.
Last night, I wanted to watch anime, Uta no Prince-sama! via internet, but I was appalled to find out that percentage of CPU of my laptop jumped up to shameless 100%, meaning my lappy froze, and no ands, ifs and buts made him budge either forward, backward or sideways.
When I had searched for the fix on the internet - I have Firefox as my primary browser - I tried watching on my secondary one, but no dice /sour face/, I found out that most of the users complained about Firefox hoarding the CPU, along with the Adobe plugin - can't remember the name right now but- not important - and it made my ire go through the roof at the thought of me not having the access to colorful little anime - what can I say, I can be ADD - inclined /sheepish/.
So, because I was grumpy enough, I thought about trying to get access through the Safe Mode of the OS. For all who are interested, I have Win7 OS, secured with with ZA as protection. I initialized Safe Mode and holy hell, it worked!
What is Safe Mode? In layman's terms, it's your OS, only whittled down to the bare essentials, and no fancy-schmancy programs you've probably loaded on later. You still can use the said fancy-schmancy programs, the only difference is, they will be intialized only when you click their icon. For experts, Safe Mode is also a playground - or some kind of a virtual sandbox where they can tweak and test the programs to their little hearts' content without damaging the OS (... Much. I think...).
Now, for some finds and warnings. As I said, the programs only initialize if you click the icon. So, when you want to go on the net, it's like with sex.... Safety First. I am not kidding. I engaged my ZA, and CPU was shockingly low, so I was one pretty happy camper. Your beloved browser will be intact, so don't worry about that. I had my add-ons - AdBlock duo and Ghostery - engaged, still no problemos. Was a marginally happier camper than before. And then, I tested the site Animeseason - was the first one with the anime, so I didn't exactly bother with any other. And lo, and behold, the thing worked smoothly as a silk! I was one ecstatic camper right then and there. Bonus points, no big amps up in CPU, however, I didn't engage any other programs, so I don't exactly know how would computer or laptop behave if any other programs would be active. As for CPU, it was as low as 2 % up to 40%..... I think, but there was no jet-lagging in the pictures or freezing frames. I went through some six or seven episodes, just to be sure - they work like Youtube, so you can stop, forward, backward as much your lil' heart wants - I only had to stop because my lappy was overheating - have HP G62, which is naturally a little prone to overheating, and it didn't help I tortured it through the day via different data /sheepish/ (That means almost 16 hours of torture, give or take some, even if I did help it with cooler pad and some cooling bags wrapped in textile. Crude, but it does take some heat off...doesn't help my room is one of the hotspot int he house in the summer, what with the position /sweatdrops/
Now, onto the warnings. If you perchance don't have the original copy of Microsoft Office, then, for all that's holy, DON'T open it! I mean it. When I tried to use my Word program, the first thing the berk had done, was to ask for the activation of the program, even if my version was already activated! /fumes silently/. So, if you despise entering the activation codes of dubious origin, you can either use Office Toolkit to get it fixed back, or - and it's simpler - Leave It Alone until you finish with watching the videos in question and go back to Normal Mode. I also noticed that I didn't have sound, and I don't know why was that yet, because Normal Mode, I have sound /confused/, but I will look it up and try to resolve it. I didn't exactly work through any other programs - well, Word pad was a notable exception, because I needed it and it worked as it should have, no problems noted. As for other programs, you will have to find out for yourselves.
Well, that's it. I did fool around with tweaking Firefox (before founding the described solution, even changing some of its core programming), but looking back, it wasn't necessary; however, I did have the Firefox for a year already and I had accumulated some useless tidbits on - mostly favorite sites and so on, so I uninstalled it, and then installed the new version. A word - if you do want to reinstall Firefox, and want your favorite websites and bookmarks intact, make a copy, which you can then transfer to new version of Firefox.
Whew. Our forefathers did have it right - the best solutions are simple. So instead of having a hissy fit over Firefox or Adobe add-on having their merry way with CPU in Normal Mode, try and switch to Safe Mode - CPU is lowered significantly, which means less chance of freezing laptop or computer.
So... what else could I say? Happy hunting!
Eirenei
Edit - 10. 7 2013; The site for animes is Animeseason. Animefreak just bulldozes through 7sweatdrops/ no brakes, seriously.
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