Hello Everyone,
Using an Acer laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium with AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-42 with 3 gigs of memory. Have had the computer about a year and it has always worked flawlessly, until recently. I think that whatever the problem is can be credited to the internet browsers I have been using, because it started with them and the problems only happen when browsing.
So, I like using Google Chrome. However, I have noticed that after you use Chrome for a while things start to get really slooooooow. Apparently I am not the only one becuase a Google search comes up with tons of hits on “why is Chrome making my computer slow?”. Of course trying to get a straight answer is impossible. So, I have enough of fooling with Chrome, uninstall it but now IE 8 is crawling, taking up to 95% of the cpu and I am even getting the blue screen of death on occasion when using it.
So, not sure where to go from here or what to do. I have run Adware and Microsoft Securities Essentials and no problems were found. I have run RegVac and cleaned the registry. I even used System Restore to see if that would help. I am at a loss now. It seems that the only move now is to do a complete wipe and re-install. While not the end of the world, certainly a pain in the ass.
Any suggestions on what could be causing the problem and what to do about it? And please refrain from “Your problem is your using Windows, Mac’s rulz” crap. I know you love your Mac, but I am not willing to spend the money. So it’s a non-issue. Thanks in advance
Every tab in Chrome opens as a new process, so if you have a lot of tabs open, it can eat up a lot of memory. When physical memory runs short, windows uses virtual memory, which involves a lot of swapping onto and off of disk, and that is painfully slow. You can see the memory chrome is using with: ctrl-alt-del ->task manager->processes. Close the tabs that are not critical, and you should get a lot of performance back.
If it’s doing it with IE too I would suspect it has very little to do with your browser anymore. Here’s what I would do, but I’m a geek (see signature): With no internet browser open, open task manager and go to processes and give it a once over, paying attention to the names. You could Google them if you want, but we’re trying not to make this take forever. Next step is to get to the point with any browser where you feel it’s become just too unbearably slow. Once you’re at this point, open the task manager again and get back to processes. In here check and see how many processes are running that weren’t running before and Google them.
If you’re using Chrome for this experiement don’t be alarmed that there might be multiple Chrome processes, that’s perfectly normal.
That’s what I would do, personally. May or may not really get you anywhere, but you’ll get some insight as to what exactly is happening behind the scenes.
EDIT: Kevbo, the OP said it was happening with Internet Explorer too, does it work the same way as Chrome with multiple processes for each tab?
runaway plugin? Chrome has Flash support built-in, and I’ve had a number of occasions where something on a page caused Flash to crap itself and chew up CPU time. Eventually I would get a notice that a plugin has become unresponsive with the option to kill it.
Instead of opening up tabs to read later, use bookmarks like we all used to in the “dark ages”.
My number 1 guess at what’s happening is the same as Kevbo’s: you’re just continuously opening new tabs and never closing the old ones. EDIT: oh, my supporting evidence-- it happens in both browsers because the slowdown is related to the way you’re using the browser and not anything the browser itself is doing. There’s nothing WRONG with using a browser this way, but you should be aware of what’s happening and then you can make the choice of adding more memory to alleviate the problem.
My number 2 guess is Flash is the culprit-- next time you notice a slowdown, do a quick inventory of what Flash applications are running. (You can probably ignore ad placements, just look at full-window Flash applications-- for example Pandora or Farmville.) Once you have a list of “suspects” you can follow-up on each one individually and see if they cause the problem.
I think it does in IE8 and IE9. I now have this problem when I upgraded. Usually after watching a bunch of YouTube stuff my browser is super slow. And this only happened after I upgraded to IE9 from IE7. If I go into processes it is running a bunch of them.
I know! I’ve got a new laptop, but all I have to do is go to Facebook, fire up the Sims and visit a few neighbors and everything slows to a crawl. It’s amazing how piggish Flash games are.
Thanks for the replies. When it comes to tabs, I use them but close them out after reading whatever page I’ve opened in them. I will try the suggestions given and see if that gets me anywhere. Thanks
scriptno
toomanytabs
tabs snooze
and flash block
this heavily cuts down on problems
also remove old chrome versions reduces the drive footprint if you want.
chromes internal task manager shift+esc i believe is useful for seeing which tab or plugin is misbehaving, you can then deal with it separately. as browsers go, chrome is fast, so it shouldn’t be an issue, but sites run tons of scripts and flash and that can cause a mess.
Update: I got tired of the stupid browser mess and dreaded the thought of a full re-install. So, I downloaded Opera as I use it on my iPhone. I uninstalled IE and Chrome and everything is working well at the moment. The browser is lighting fast and I am not having any pausing, lockup or crashing issues for the moment. Hopefully this will be the end of the problem.
You should have just reinstalled chrome, something broke it before your last restore point. I’ve never had chrome go bad, its one of the best browsers out there.
Sigh Update V2.0 Still having problems. Just got a blue screen of death while using Opera and it stopped responding several times. Thought that I had the problem solved. Okay, it looks as though I am going to just do a fresh install. I will need to copy the files I need to save and then wipe the drive.
Speaking of that, is there a free service that allows me to park files on it through the internet? If so, it will make the re-install much easier. I don’t seem to have any blank CD’s or DVD’s around at them moment. I could grab the external backup drive off the desktop, but it would be easier to do it I could just upload to the web and the retrieve them after the install. Prior to Windows 7 I would have just transfered them over the wireless network to the desktop, but it is running Vista and for some reason I cannot get file sharing to work between the two.
Funny, when I was a bit younger and computers were new, I would have welcomed this challenge and spent hours finding a solution or transferring files and re-installing. I either don’t have the patience or the energy any longer. Same with detailing our cars. When I was younger I would spend a weekend detailing my car, cleaning every nook and cranny. Now I loathe even having to wash it. I guess I am getting old. Double Sigh
Now that Opera has crapped out on you too, can you try reinstalling Chrome? Then add one plug-in, if any, back one at a time over the course of a few days to see if any of them screw things up or if it just installs already slow?
Okay, Triple Sigh New Update. I am transferring all of my important files to DropBox (thanks Askance, I owe you one!) and started playing around with Opera some more to try to figure out what the hell is going on. Here is what I have noticed and it maybe the problem.
The browser (wether it is IE, Chrome or Opera) all have one thing in common when they lockup or I get the blue screen of death. Facebook is open. I never noticed it before because I had multiple tabs opened up, but just a few minutes ago I was using Opera and I opened Facebook. The moment I tried to upload a picture, the browser crashed and then after 30 seconds or so I got the Blue Screen of Death. Thinking that it might be the problem, I re-booted, logged into Facebook on Opera and the browser locked up just going to the site. This time, however, it finally recovered. I closed it out and came to Straight Dope with no issues, Yahoo and Fark with no issues. So, it seems as if going to Facebook is causing the crash. Now, this may or may not be the problem, but if it is what would be causing it. Hopefully if this is the problem I can get it fixed so I won’t have to re-install. If I can’t get an answer within an hour or so it is time to wipe the drive.
I do appreciate all of the helpful advice. The best being the suggestion of DropBox. It seems like it will be a really easy way to keep important files backed up off premise, and for free! I use an external hard drive to backup my desktop, but if there is a fire that doesn’t do me any good.
I read that Facebook uses Flash for “applications/games and any videos people post on their profile”. That’s the single most likely contributor, IMO. You can get extensions for Chrome (and I’m sure other browsers) that block all Flash content, worth a shot I’d say.
Not only that, it syncs them between machines. So you can make a shopping list at home, update it at work with a few more things, add more at home - do that all week and your list is done for the weekend mega-shop. You can use a simple text file as an *ad doc *diary or to-do list.
Been playing around with the DropBox. I like how I can just drop into it from Windows Explorer and I don’t have to do anything else. I sure wish I had known about this earlier.
On another note, this problem has led to some good. The Opera browser is quite good and I think that I will stick with it. I use it on my iPhone and it is head and shoulders above the OEM Safari browser. From my limited use I have to say it is better than IE (and I always found IE good) and seems as good as Chrome.
For what it’s worth, I’ve wrestled with this problem too. I h8 the idea of having to bookmark all the tabs - for all the $$$ we pay for a laptop, u should be able to have a few browser windows & tabs open at once. Over the years, I’ve tried Chrome, Opera, IE, and Firefox - the one with the easiest reset strategy & fewest freeze-ups has been Firefox (I also use the Thunderbird client for email, and it never causes any problems). An especially good feature for FF is the ability to re-populate all browsers (and all their tabs) after a crash, even a user-induced one. What I mean by that is this: set the option to recover all windows (and their tabs) after a crash. Then, if I notice my computer is slowing down, I simply kill the FF process in Task Manager (FF only creates 1 process for all its windows, and it’s always the biggest cpu & memory hog), then click the FF icon to open 1 window, which has a button and checkboxes to click to restore all windows and tabs, or lets u pick them individually.
This is a workaround, not an ideal strategy, but it worx. I’d love to find a way to mark certain windows & tabs to ‘sleep’; that is, keep the window open but don’t use any CPU or memory until the window or tab is activated or switched on (like a stub file that’ll point to the real file). Anyone know of a FF extension or plug-in that does this?
BTW, I’m running Windows 7 64 bit, 4 gig RAM.
I was a big Opera fan before they released a version that was pretty broken a couPle years back. Went to chrome, and it seems like there are fewer pages it has trouble with than opera.