Google Chrome is very slow

[Carole]

Been having a lot of problems with my PC lately which almost grinds to a halt sometimes and freezes for a while.  I looked in Task Manager and it seems that Google Chrome is using loads of memory.

I am now on Firefox, (but I do like the features of Chrome better), it's working perfectly fine on Firefox. 

Any thoughts?

Carole

[RobertM]

It's not really any help but I've found that too recently but I'm wondering if there is some bloatware in there somewhere.  IE seems ok as does Chrome on the slower Obs Laptop.  Might have to reinstall it so you could try that too.

Robert

[Carole]

Thanks Robert, that does help, as it tells me it's not just me.

Might try a re-install as you suggest.

From time to time Chrome works perfectly well. 

Carole

[Mike]

Check your extensions and disable anything you don't use or need.

[Carole]

What do you mean by extensions Mike? 

Also I'd like to disable some of the start up programs but can;t find out where to do it. both on windows 7 and on my laptop windows vista if any-one can help.

Carole

[Mike]

What do you mean by extensions Mike? 

Top right, icon like 3 bars. Click it, go down to SETTINGS. Then click EXTENSIONS on the left. Look for anything you didn't install or don't use and disable it.

[Carole]

Gotcha
No nothing I didn't install.  Not much on there. 

Thanks

Carole

[mickw]

A W7 "update" killed Chrome on my laptop a couple of months ago so have you recently had an update ?

[Carole]

have you recently had an update ?

I don't think so, it told me this morning it will do one when I shut down next time.  Not sure how often they update.

Really don't want to be without chrome I like the way all your favourites get saved to different computers and it easy to save and access favourites, that's the primary thing I don't like about firefox. 

Also my website is a google website and I can only update it from Chrome, plus I use Chrome+, so it would be a real pain if I lost it altogether.

Carole

[Carole]

A W7 "update" killed Chrome on my laptop a couple of months ago

Are you still not able to use it Mick?

Carole

[mickw]

A W7 "update" killed Chrome on my laptop a couple of months ago

Are you still not able to use it Mick?

Carole

No - Getting tempted to delete W7 and install XP

[Carole]

Working perfectly fine today, good speed and have not changed anything.

What is the logic in this?

Could it be there is some sort of "script running" (whatever that is) when it's on the "go slow"?

Could some-one kindly explain what that means, sometimes I get a box coming up telling me that is happening, particularly in Hotmail, but not necessarily when I get chrome problems.

Carole

[Mac]

Nothing wrong with chrome, i bet my bottom dollar its a 32/64 bit issue with your operating system.

Download the following program and install it.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

Run it and you will get a something similar to this.





Showing you what processes are running and as you can see the CPU is at 85% idle, if you look at this i have quite a few chrome tags open and they take up a lot of memory
and yes chrome and the pc is running very slow, but you can see that the cpu is not being used.

If you look at the top of the first image you will see a program called conhost.exe, it is this program that is slowing down your PC, even though it shows that it is using 0% of the CPU
the conhost.exe program is an interface between the 32 & 64 bit operating systems, called by a program that was too laze you be recoded to make use of the 64 bist system, its a cheat which causes major slow down problems..

IT IS THIS PROGRAM that is them main culprit for windows and everything else running slowly.
If you kill this task, windows will resume full speed.

The culprit for mine is actually Itunes and this opens between 1 and 4 of these,
And they are not closed down when itunes exits either.

I have no problem with chrome running with 20-40 tabs open.
Mac

[Carole]

I've done that Mac, this is what I got, I can't see that

conhost.exe

file anywhere, but you might be able to see if there is anything else.



Thanks

Carole

[RobertM]

My chrome has actually given up the ghost now.  It opens but all I get is a "Page(s) Unresponsive" message, not even the settings will load now   I even tried reinstalling.

The error message isn't much use either:

Faulting application name: chrome.exe, version: 39.0.2171.99, time stamp: 0x54aef409
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x719b0000
Faulting process ID: 0x67c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d035c96345a4fd
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report ID: a1010d63-a1bc-11e4-bec2-4c72b93219a1
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:


Will take a further look at this tomorrow.

Robert

[Carole]

My chrome has actually given up the ghost now. 

So what is it with chrome, when it works it has some excellent features.

Carole

[Klitos]

A few things you could do to try to fix performance issues in Chrome:

1. Right-click on the "New Tab" tab (that's the right-most tab along the top of the Chrome window) and select "Task Manager". This will show you what extensions are running and how much memory each of them is using. If you suspect a culprit that's taking up too much memory, you can disable it.

2. The Task Manager mentioned above also shows the memory taken by each page (tab). Some web pages contain very large images, even if they appear "normal"-sized. Some people put their 20-megapixel images directly on their web pages and get their HTML code to scale it down to a reasonable size. But that means the browser still has to download these huge images and allocate large amounts of memory for them, even if they appear small on the page.

3. If you are technically minded, you can paste the special URL chrome://profiler/ into the address bar. Figuring out how to interpret the results is left as an exercise for the reader.

4. Some web pages contain Javascript code which allows the page to be interactive, but sometimes this Javascript is badly written and consumes too many resources (such as memory and CPU). There's not much you can do about that, except close the tab.

5. Some web pages contain lots of adverts which use up too many resources; in particular, the Adobe Flash video adverts are notorious for this. If you find this is a problem, you can disable Adobe Flash (from Settings -> Extensions) or you can use the ad-blocking software AdBlockPlus. (I reluctantly installed this myself recently. I don't like to deprive web authors of well-earned advertising income, but when they clutter the page with so many adverts that they deprive me of my time, CPU, memory and electricity, then my use of AdBlockPlus is their just desert.)

[Mac]

another way is to uninstall google chrome, then
delete all the chrome folders.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome
C:\Users\YOURNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome


and reinstall an old version.
Anything from six months ago should be fine, but dont forget to turn off auto updates.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/history

Mac.

[RobertM]

Thanks Mac, will give that a go.

[Carole]

Back to Firefox again, chrome is pants today.

Carole

[Mike]

Carole,

Is your PC 32 or 64 bit?

Are you running the appropriate 32 or 64 bit version of Chrome?

Mike

[mickw]

Thanks Mike
Been without Chrome for ages after a W7 update killed it.

I never gave 32/64 bit versions of Chrome a thought - It obviously does make a difference.

Just installed 64 bit version and am now up and running again

[Rick]

You'd think the installer might actually check, or failing that, the program itself might perform some basic checks...

[mickw]

You'd think the installer might actually check, or failing that, the program itself might perform some basic checks...

And nothing this simple mentioned in the Chrome forum/newsgroup either

[RobertM]

Now that is bizarre.  It was working then decided not to, I've just installed the 64 bit version and now it works again ! 

Either it was installed as 32bit then something stopped it working or it was 64bit and something updated it to 32bit (unlikely I would have thought)  at work

[Carole]

32bit.

So might it be worth re-installing Chrome and making sure it's a 32bit version.

Been using this for a year and no trouble until recently.

Carole

[mickw]

I have no idea what version of Chrome (32 or 64) was originally installed but it was a W7 update that stopped it.
Mac mentioned somewhere that bad coding could mess up the cross system working if using 64 bit system and 32 bit software.

Carole it depends whether your system is 32 or 64 bit

[Mike]

Carole are you sure you have a 32 bit PC? If so it must be VERY old. Which is likely also contributing to your woes.

[Carole]

Carole are you sure you have a 32 bit PC? If so it must be VERY old.

It's a windows 7 that I bought a year ago as a refurbished desktop.  It's 100 times better than what i was using before though. 

[Mike]

Pentium! Good grief. No wonder.

[Carole]

Doesn't explain though why it works nice and fast some days and other days it almost grinds to a halt.

Carole

[Mike]

You're running a modern piece of software on technology that's around 10 years old now. Pentium processors have been replaced with many iterations of processor design since and the latest version of Chrome is optimised for those kinds of processors. You've also got only 2 processors and 2Gb of Ram.

Your internet browser is typically the most memory and processor intensive piece of software you use regularly nowadays. Right now my Chrome is taking up around 1Gb of Ram. On my machine with 32Gb of ram that is negligible. On yours with only 2Gb that is using up 50% of your entire Ram, leaving not a lot for your OS and other background applications. So it will inevitably start to grind to a halt at times.

I would suggest you do what Mac said and delete Chrome then install a much older version and see if that is any better. Another option is to increase your Ram to the maximum your Mb will take, especially as Ram is so cheap now. Crucial has a tool on their website that will scan your PC and tell you how much ram you can install and the price.

Either that or it's time to upgrade to a modern PC.