You were doing so well!

June 11, 2011 5:46 AM

Has Chrome just gotten buggy lately or is it just me?

I'm just having a lot of generic misbehavior -- some pages take a long time to load and crash, but then work fine when I refresh; others just never load; others seem to get stuck halfway through loading. I'm also having an issue where I search for something on Google, find a link, click on it...and Google acts like it's about to take me to the link, and then just....doesn't.

I'm not even sure what I should search Chrome's tech support for, because there's just a lot of different issues, and it's only been recently that it's been acting up.

posted by EmpressCallipygos to Computers & Internet (37 answers total)

What operating system are you on? Do you have any extensions installed?
posted by backwards guitar at 6:05 AM on June 11, 2011

Standard, beta or developer version?
posted by jim in austin at 6:15 AM on June 11, 2011

I experience the same problems off and on -- mostly mysterious page hangs that take forever to load. I do have some extensions (16, much fewer than I had on Firefox) but Chrome's seemed to act up like this periodically for longer than extensions have been around.

You can see if a specific page or extension is holding you up by pressing Shift+Esc. This will bring up a Task Manager-style list of processes that you can sort by memory usage or CPU; it'll show you what, if anything, is hogging resources so you can do a targeted kill. But in my experience it's usually a browser-wide problem. Best bet is probably make sure to shut down and restart your browser (and computer!) every so often.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:18 AM on June 11, 2011

I have the same issues with Chrome (and RockMelt, which is Chrome based). Are you on Vista? It's been suggested to me that they don't play all that nicely together and I might be better off upgrading to Windows7.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:13 AM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

On one of my machines running XP Media Center 2005, it sure is. Especially when I open Tweetdeck. It goes straight to shite. Slows, hangs, kill? page warnings, the works.
posted by Mike Mongo at 7:17 AM on June 11, 2011

Chrome has been atrocious for me the past week or so, after being my go-to browser for months. AdWords won't open, other pages randomly render strangely (LinkedIn being one). I have a relatively new MacBook so I don't think it's my computer. I've switched to Firefox 5, which is almost as fast and doesn't have any compatibility issues.
posted by redondo77 at 8:12 AM on June 11, 2011

Windows 7 machine here. Chrome is my standard browser and I have less than 10 extensions. It is slowing and is not dumping the cache out as expected and so does not play well with my Outllook Web App unless I manually dump the cache.


Try dumping your cache and see if that helps. I definitely noticed more processor usage since I moved to Windows 7 but have not narrowed what apps are causing a 100% CPU usage.
posted by jadepearl at 8:17 AM on June 11, 2011

Yeah, I get this too, using standard Chrome on an XP machine. No extensions (I don't use it as my main web browser, partly because of the flakiness). It's not a recent thing for me, though - I've been seeing it for months now.

On preview: I've just tried clearing the cache; it looked promising, but within ten pageloads I hit the slow-load-followed-by-Oops! thing again. Took two reloads to get the page to come up. Maybe Chrome just isn't comfortable on a computer/OS this old.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:59 AM on June 11, 2011

Response by poster: I have Windows 7. I've tried clearing the cache (it's usually the first thing I try) and sometimes that helps. Sometimes...not.

I think I have maybe one extension.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:08 AM on June 11, 2011

I've had some issues with Chrome on my Macbook Pro the last week or so, but I think it was some extension issues. I installed Minimalist Gmail, and it apparently broke my autocomplete on email addresses. I don't do many extensions anyway.
posted by shinynewnick at 9:19 AM on June 11, 2011

I have windows 7 and yes, Chrome does seem derpier lately. Slow loading, freezing up (as in "this program is not responding), page not found errors (when the page can very easily be found in another browser), etc etc. I have 0 extensions. At first I had mistaken it as my entire computer running slow and I thought I had a virus or something. But it really is JUST Chrome.

I have uninstalled Chrome and switched back to FF or Opera 2 or 3 times in the past few years solely due to bugs :(
posted by joyeuxamelie at 9:33 AM on June 11, 2011

flash + chrome + ubuntu 11.04 = random cpu overload but that's a bugginess trifecta...
posted by ennui.bz at 10:07 AM on June 11, 2011

I'm using the dev build of Chromium (so I expect flaky behavior), but it's never been as bad as it has been since I last updated about a week ago. The biggest problem for me is Flash crashing. It never used to do that, and now I'm lucky if it doesn't. I do sometimes have the page-loading "Oops!" too, but it's not common.

I also completely lost my profile. My extensions and theme are gone. At least it saved the bookmarks. This is likely a third-party problem, though.
posted by tatma at 11:17 AM on June 11, 2011

I've been having lots of problems too -- Win XP. I have maybe one or two extensions. I love it, but it's driving me crazy.

Has anybody seen anything in forums about known issues or anything?
posted by la petite marie at 11:35 AM on June 11, 2011

Windows 7, clear my cache regularly, and I have these problems too. Gmail is especially slow. I've tried disabling all my extensions, and I still have crashing, lagging, and page not found errors that I don't experience in FF.
posted by katillathehun at 12:27 PM on June 11, 2011

Response by poster: Has anybody seen anything in forums about known issues or anything?

See, that's the hell of it -- I search their help forums but everything for "slow load times" dates back to 2009.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2011

There was a time from late 2008 to early 2009 that Chrome just would not seem to cooperate. Pages loaded slowly, images and pictures often would not at all, and it would occasionally just crash. I switched to Cometbird, a Firefox variant, during that time. This was all on XP. I started to try Chrome again in the spring of 2009 and found that the browser worked fine. No one else I knew who was using Chrome at the time reported any problems.
posted by Bachsir at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2011

I'm using Chrome 11.0.696.71 with no extensions on OS X 10.6.7, and it's rock solid. Never slow, everything works.
posted by spasm at 1:10 PM on June 11, 2011

The dev version of chrome a few days ago (13..something something) was unstable for me (crash after 30 seconds, not even finished loading all the tabs) but that was resolved in the next day's update. Running 11.0.696.71 on this machine, it's nice and stable.
posted by defcom1 at 5:22 PM on June 11, 2011

Just to help rule out any "man in the browser" hijacks, be sure to run Malwarebytes as well as Tdsskiller and GMER (further down the page).

Some other questions:
- Is this just happening with Chrome and no other browsers?
- Have you tried disabling the one extension thats installed?
- What kinds of security programs do you have installed and running? (antivirus, firewall, ipfilter, adblockers, etc)

Try running Hijackthis and post an export of what it sees on pastebin (for privacy, as you can delete it later on).

It could be a problem with Chrome, or a lot of things between the browser and the sites your visiting. Lets see if we can narrow it down.
posted by samsara at 7:09 PM on June 11, 2011

I don't have any suggestion but thanks for this question/post, I thought it was my ancient Thinkpad or some evil comcast filter. I frequently restart Chrome, sometimes closing some or all the tabs and using new ones works.
posted by sammyo at 7:20 PM on June 11, 2011

Response by poster: Samsara -- I've never used Hijack This before, and I seem to be having trouble with it (but it's definitely a user error, because I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do after it scans things).

But I do regularly check for viruses using Malware Bytes, and it all checks out. I also regularly clean out my registry with Auslogics, as well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:58 PM on June 11, 2011

I've updated all of my machines and VMs to 12.xyzzy and they all seem fine. I'm mostly on Macs with a few Win 7 installs in dual boot or VMs. 12 isn't very old yet so maybe I'll see more problems.

They did a lot of work on flash integration in 12 so flash may be acting differently.
posted by chairface at 10:37 PM on June 11, 2011

I'm having the same issues too, win7 and chrome 12. I suspected it had something to do with flash, and based on chairface's comment, I think I'm right, though even disabling flash doesn't help.
posted by odin53 at 12:57 AM on June 12, 2011

No problems here - Vista, Chrome 12.0, and I push it pretty heavily, often with 30 or 40 tabs open, simultaneously. I do a lot of development work, including a good deal of javascript, so I'm pushing things harder than the average user, most likely.
posted by syzygy at 4:46 AM on June 12, 2011

I've never used Hijack This before, and I seem to be having trouble with it

Oh sorry about that! What you'll want to do from the Main Menu is "Do a system scan and save a logfile." Make sure if you're on Windows 7 that you right-click and run as an administrator. This is just a diagnostic tool that can help others see what startup items, services, and browser components are running on your PC. (pasting the resulting logfile on pastebin is preferred as it'll take up a lot of screenspace if pasted here, plus it'll have references in it to your profile name which you may or may not care about...you're welcome to XXXX those out before pasting in pastebin).

It's good you're running Malwarebytes regularly. What about the other questions on your Firewall, Antivirus, and/or security software?

Also be gentle with registry cleaners, as running them regularly can make certain registry problems worse (broken dependancy chains..etc). I would limit running a cleaner to once every few months, or after you've installed and removed a lot of software...and always create a system restore point beforehand. A general rule of thumb for registry cleaners is: only run them when you're experiencing slowdowns due to orphaned registry references. Defragmenting however is good to do often (weekly is usually sufficient..unless you see evidence of a failing hard drive, then stop and back up your important stuff immediately)

I'll put my previous questions here again:

- Is this just happening with Chrome and no other browsers?
- Have you tried disabling all the extensions that are installed?
- What kinds of security programs do you have installed and running? (antivirus, firewall, ipfilter, adblockers, etc)

We would need to know the answers to these, otherwise its a a lot of assumption and speculation on Chrome in this thread. I also have one more suggestion. Install Secunia PSI (even if just temporarily) to make sure all of your 3rd party components that could affect Chrome are up to date (adobe, java, quicktime, etc).

It may also be helpful to know if you're using any alternative DNS or anti-ad software.

Sorry this seems like a lot to do. But if you would like to narrow down the issue I can definitely help you get there. Feel free to memail for troubleshooting anytime as well. There's a lot of other tools that could be used for Chrome itself, but it'd be best to rule out any outside configurations first.
posted by samsara at 6:49 AM on June 12, 2011

I had had an enormous amount of trouble using the web recently with both firefox and chrome as well as some other browsers.

After I upgraded my RAM from 500MB to 1500MB I have had hardly any trouble at all.

I suspect that the recent trend towards dependency on javascript (and flash) has essentially increased the basic memory requirements of everyday web browsing.

How much RAM do you have?
posted by Anything at 7:05 AM on June 12, 2011

Response by poster: For the record: I have Chrome 12.

Samsara: the problem I was having was that I did "scan and save logfile," but then I got an error message saying that there was no logfile and did I want to create one. I said yes, and wordpad opened up, but nothing else happened and I didn't know if I was supposed to manually cut-and-paste something there, and if so, what I was supposed to cut-and-paste. I also got an error message that Hijack this couldn't read my "hosts file" or something like that, and I'd have to do something manually if I wanted to fix it, but I had no clue what that was talking about so I ignored it. I'll admit I don't see your questions about firewall and antivirus, but I have AVG freeware. Also, the only extension I have is a chrome-specific version of AdBlock.

Anything: I have no idea how to ascertain how much RAM I have. If it helps, this is a fairly new laptop (I only got it in December).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:12 AM on June 12, 2011

You can right-click on "Computer" within your start menu and select "Properties" to get the RAM amount.


Try disabling adblock temporarily and visit the same sites you did before to see if the issue persists. It's possible that adblock is scraping ads, but is accidently breaking the flow of the pages (sometimes advertisements can be poorly embedded in a myriad of <div>'s that an adblocker can actually make the page unstable.)

Still it's a good type of plugin to have for general browsing...
posted by samsara at 8:25 AM on June 12, 2011

For Hijackthis, that sounds like normal behavior. You would want to copy and paste the entire contents of the wordpad log. (you can avoid the hosts error by running hijackthis.exe as an administrator...right-click/run as administrator).

Before copying and pasting the resulting log, do a CTRL+H and replace all instances of your login name with "xxxx." This is an optional step, just to keep your login name private if its based off of your real name or if you use it elsewhere.
posted by samsara at 8:38 AM on June 12, 2011

Response by poster: Try disabling adblock temporarily and visit the same sites you did before to see if the issue persists.

The problem with THAT, though, is that there IS no consistency to which sites give me more trouble than any others, and even whether a given site will consistently cause me problems. Even METAFILTER sometimes is slow to load and then I get the "we can't load this" error, and then I refresh and presto, there it is. So there's no way of knowing whether it was AdBlock that did the trick or just Chrome's whimsy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on June 12, 2011

Response by poster: For Hijackthis, that sounds like normal behavior. You would want to copy and paste the entire contents of the wordpad log. (you can avoid the hosts error by running hijackthis.exe as an administrator...right-click/run as administrator).

By "the entire contents of the wordpad log," do you mean "the entire contents of the list of code that pops up in the HIJACK THIS window"? Becuase there is nothing in the wordpad window that pops up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on June 12, 2011

The problem with THAT, though, is that there IS no consistency to which sites give me more trouble than any others, and even whether a given site will consistently cause me problems.

This is simply to rule it out...process of elimination. Advertisements are random which would coincide with random behavior. But if disabling adblock temporarily does not produce positive results then that can be ruled out.

there is nothing in the wordpad window that pops up.

Oh, that's odd. It might be due to Wordpad being associated to .log files instead of notepad. Try it again with Hijackthis running as administrator. If that still doesn't work an alternative scanner like HJT is OTL (OldTimers List-it). Both of these programs are generally used for finding malware (OTL is very commonly used on bleepingcomputer.com), but are very useful for getting a picture of what is running on a PC and what has changed.
posted by samsara at 8:54 AM on June 12, 2011

Here's a similar askme to yours I helped on, where we were able to narrow down the problem to Peerblock...just to show you the thought process I'm using here as well. What seemed to be browser specific was actually an IP filter that was blocking certain hosts...sometimes randomly. Hope that clears up where I'm heading with the suggestions I made so far.
posted by samsara at 9:00 AM on June 12, 2011

Response by poster: Right-clicking doesn't seem to open up any option to run Hijack this as an administrator.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:09 PM on June 12, 2011

Chrome on my MacBook at home has no problems, but Chrome on my work computer (XP) is buggy and crashy lately. E.g. whenever I launch it, the first new tab gives me the sad face this-page-is-not-responding error. I have to click "wait" two or three times for it to finish launching.
posted by statolith at 7:34 PM on June 13, 2011

Response by poster: I'm still having this trouble -- anyone else?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:33 AM on June 18, 2011