Safari randomly taking up all of CPU

Hi,

Safari has randomly been running by CPU up to and over 100% of CPU time and causing my computer's fans to run. My question isn't so much how to fix this, but how I can even start to find out what to fix. Is there a way I can record what's happening the next time it happens so I can post it here and get help?

MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
10.10.2
Processor: 2.4Ghz Intel 2 Core duo
Memory: 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

Is it Safari or the Safari Web Content process that's running up to 100%? If the latter, the issue is likely site specific, and particularly, a plugin.

Hi, yes, Safari itself, and it's running at 120% of CPU as we speak. Recently I was having trouble with web content on Gmail, but that situation seems to have been fixed.

Hi world, still need help with this. Would be super appreciated if anyone could offer any insight, or even to tell me what I need to give you to help me solve this. It's happening multiple times a day.

A simple solution would be to simply migrate away from Safari to another browser.

If you want to ascertain what's happening, keep a close eye on when this happens and particularly, if there's a pattern with the sites open. A simple first test would be running it with no sites open to see if it consumes CPU resources simply by being open.

More memory may well help as 2GB is minimal. Your MB can handle up to 6GB, 1 x 4GB and 1 x 2GB.

To begin tracking this down you need to see what sites you are visiting/sitting on and what they are doing. Make sure you are running the Safari versions of Flashblock, Adblock and Ghostery to kill all ads and other things that use up CPU usage for no reason.

Next, Safari doesn't include Flash like Chrome does, so you have had to install it and that might have gone rogue..

harryb2448 said:

More memory may well help as 2GB is minimal. Your MB can handle up to 6GB, 1 x 4GB and 1 x 2GB.

Click to expand...

Hello - I'd have to agree w/ Harry - not sure if that will be a solution to your issue but you are running the most recent version of Yosemite on an old computer w/ only 2 GB of RAM - 4 GB is probably the minimum for this OS X, so you'll need to address that point. Also, just curious if this started w/ your recent operating system upgrade?

Plus, provide some more information on what other programs you are running on the laptop that may be hogging resources, especially if any are related to AV or malware - Dave

Although Safari is known to use a lot of memory, this issue appears to be separate from this (unless Safari is using up CPU cycles because it's paging out). Thus, I think the advice for more memory is a good one but perhaps not the solution here (I could be wrong though).

Memory

Thanks for the help everyone.

That's so weird it says I have 2GB of RAM. I upgraded to 4 and it used to work... is it possible that part of my RAM is broken?

In any case, I will try re-installing Flash as a first step, and see if I can't keep track of which websites are doing it. Wouldn't I be able to identify in Activity Monitor somehow if it's Flash? Is there not a way to get a report on what's going on when it's overclocking that people could look at? Would a screenshot of activity help?

It does it most often when playing videos, but otherwise seems pretty random (since I'm always on the same sites anyways).