Google Chrome on Windows 'completely unusable', gripe users Google's Chrome browser promises "speed, simplicity and security", but for a significant number of Windows users you can strike "speed" from that list. A thread on Google’s Chrome forum titled: “Chrome has become completely unusable, in almost every imaginable way” has attracted over 375 posts since the problem was raised in …
MacBook pro - i7, OSX mavericks, shit-loads of RAM and Chrome is bloody awful recently
Memory leaks everywhere, page rendering bugs (have to resize the window occasionally to display a new page)
I wouldn't be the first time in comouting history that more resources have made a program run worse...
MacBook Pro - i5, OSX Yosemite, plenty of RAM.
I've taken to launching Chrome only rarely as needed. I find that Chrome makes the system less stable; for example, randomly, control panels that require password input would not unlock until I quit Chrome. Why does Chrome interfere with System Preferences? I don't know. It's frustrating. And playing video in Chrome runs both cores at 100%, draining the battery very quickly and making the UI very unresponsive.
On the other hand, right now, Chrome in fullscreen on a rotated screen on Mac does correct subpixel antialiasing. No other program does this. Chrome in desktop on the rotated screen also doesn't do correct subpixel antialiasing. WTH, Apple?
I've had bad experiences with Chrome on Windows, too. My favorite period was back in May, when Google Drive crashed Google Chrome. I had to use Chrome for Flash and Firefox for Google Drive. (I also no longer install Adobe's Flash Player separately. Flash sucks.)
Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 64 bit, Windows 8.1, Fedora, Ubuntu - ALL crash since about version 35 and it is getting much worse. All my machines have at least 16 to 64 GB ram and NVIDIA 760 or higher cards.
It crashes when I try to grade on eCollege
It crashes on plenty of other websites
I suspect major coding changes under the hood are causing this. I am using the default 32 bit versions. I also see Chrome sucking up plenty of CPU and RAM as well. In the process of going back to Firefox. I do see them update all the time - now on version 39 and it takes forever to apply updates.
I can say with about 75% certainty it's a problem with chrome's flash player. Right click on the "new tab" button and select "task manager' in chrome. You'll see what tabs are eating the CPU. In every case where Chrome turned to crap for me, it's been tabs with flash. Even though I have flashblock on, the fact that there's a flash element somewhere in the source makes those tabs go nuts.
But it's not consistent. It can go days without a problem. Then one day, I take the notebook out of sleep mode, and *bam*, problem's there. Exit Chrome, restart, let all the tabs reload, and 50/50 the problem will recurr. Reboot the system, restart Chrome, problem's gone again for a few days.
But always, it is the flash tabs that start this chain.
It happens quite a lot to me (use it for javascript debugging and css work) and have learnt to live with it as the dev tools are good. Two things are really irritating though.
1. It appears to be impossible to clear the file cache - clearing the cache manually rarely works entirely and the options to stop caching while the dev tools are open is flaky too. Incognito also caches files. This is bloody annoying if you are debugging js includes and Chrome is keeping hold of stale files.
2. Whoever thought "Aw Snap!" was amusing needs a knee in the nads.
Whoever thought "Aw Snap!" was amusing needs a knee in the nads.
Just had that whilst submitting my VAT return. Not amused*.
Not even using Chrome - but Chromium on Linux. IMHO its just the bloat that all good software gets destroyed with. Chrome/Chromium had it made, swift and minimal display taken from what you actually want to see. Why can't they just keep it simple?
* Re-done successfully with Firefox.
<snip>
"1. It appears to be impossible to clear the file cache - clearing the cache manually rarely works entirely and the options to stop caching while the dev tools are open is flaky too. Incognito also caches files. This is bloody annoying if you are debugging js includes and Chrome is keeping hold of stale files."
<snip>
I have noticed that and it has lots of knock on effects, e.g. I can't logon to my Easyjet account butcause of a load of old outdated crap being stored. The dreaded Inertnet Exploder works fine as do the others but Chrome will not let go of old crap run when it last successfully logged in.
As a frequent traveler this sub optimal as one might say.
Ditto. Still nippy here. I can easily believe it's scraping at the graphics drivers tho. Little trouble on my recent Nvidia. More data needed.
I do find crashed ad-heavy pages after prolonged inactivity near recent heavy MMOFPS usage every now and then though. Used the internal bug reporter.
Wonder if there's something out there worming in.
My (very) old core i3 laptop (Win 7, 64 bit) - with a duff battery - lasts for nearly three hours using Firefox, and well under two using Chrome.
If I let my son stay up all evening watching Minecraft videos or playing Roblox (browser based game) on my i7 desktop PC (Win 8 Pro, 64 bit), the fans max out (and the bedroom turns into a sauna) using Chrome but remains relatively cool'n'quiet using Firefox.
Two different machines, two different configs, two different OS's two different browsers. The only component causing trouble is Chrome.
I've been using Chrome since it came out, piling more and more plugins on it - and never been anything less than faultless and butter-off-the-back-of-a-lubed-dolphin-smooth.
Not for one moment saying there can't be problems - but entirely disingenuous to state there's a major problem with Chrome.
I've asked for, voted for and even got features in the Chrome forums - I can only suggest if you think there's a problem you tell Google - and I've complete confidence they'll do their best to fix the issues.
I've been having a lot of extension crashes on Win7. But it's dev-m Chrome, so I just assumed it was the risk of running it.
These users could probably speed up the browser a lot by adding Adblock and Privacy Badger. As long as they don't crash every 5 minutes.
Edit: what happens is that an extension will start taking up 25% of the CPU (1 of 4 cores), and new tabs won't load. So I go to Chrome task manager, end the process, and click the box that immediately A pops up, allowing me to rerun the extension. Any unloaded content immediately starts working. Repeat frequently... the type of extension doesn't seem to matter. Adblock+, Privacy Badger, and RSS Live Links all do it.
'Maybe it only affects systems with really esoteric hardware or running unsupported versions of Windows like XP.'
Two desktop machines at work, one running XP and the other Win 7.
Over the past couple of weeks, Chrome on the XP box has been exhibiting all sorts of random weirdness, from massive memory leaks (with no tabs open) through to being selective which web sites it opens.
The Win 7 box is fine.
Interestingly, the version of Chrome on my Linux box@work has been acting up over the past couple of weeks (memory leaks etc, but I've not had the time to have a good look at it)..then again, there was the recent fubar they had with the 32bit linux version and Debian which took about a week to sort out..
Never really understood the necessity for a 64 bit browser - just how many tabs do you need open before memory becomes a limitation?
Anyway, all the browsers go through cycles of crappiness. Firefox had problems a couple of years ago. Still might happen if they go ahead poking an email client into the browser.
Latest builds of IE look pretty good, but not sure I'm allowed to say that on The Register.
There are other advantages to 64-bit but the key point here is that 64-bit Chrome is still Beta level software so far as I'm aware. I wonder how many of the complainers are the same as the one sampled in the article, i.e. they are just too dumb to realise that the beta 64-bit software is not going to be as reliable as the old 32-bit version they are used to.
IE itself is OK, but Bing Search returns poisoned domains at the top of the tree for some quite ordinary terms; also that silly little box in the top left is too small to be the main interaction with the browser. Microsoft need to fix their search returns and get rid of the truly awful, horrible MSN default page; commonest question I get asked about it is "how do I get rid of it?". Most of my users do not want to know about Kim Kardashian.
It's not just memory it hogs, it fairly hammers the CPU.
I first noticed on a laptop when the fan would kick in if I opened Chrome, pumping out heat across the desk. Close Chrome and it would immediately return to a quiet cool state. Investigations in the simple Task Manager showed Chrome using 30% just as the only app open (and on a single blank page).
Perhaps some software running in the background interfering with it..
Antivirus?
Trusteer Rapport? (I see this cause issues frequently)
Bad drivers?
The last major issue I had with Chrome was due to the error reporting module.. Would stop virtual machines from being able to allocate enough memory.
Both. Hideous performance on client browsers (Chrome and IE) often down to Norton / Avast toolbar and / or Trusteer Crapport. I always ditch them, then no worries. As regards ad-heavy sites, I often employ various popular HOSTS builds (to avoid malware rather than ads), but boy does it improve performance better than ad-blocking BHOs (apologies - kind of said something similar elsewhere today but it's relevant to the topic)
It also seems like every update makes the omnibar less and less useful. I still don't know how to remove unwanted entries from its suggestion list. Time was when typing 'th' would bring up 'theregister'. Now I have to type 'ther' before it offers that as the default. I've seen articles saying that some combination of shift keys with delete will remove items but it's never worked for me.
And yes, I've had multi-core CPU machines jam up while Chrome fannies around doing who knows what. It's still mostly okay but over the past year or two it does seem to have gone down hill.
It will depend on how much history you have that starts with 'th' already. I pops up for me when I just type 't'. To delete an entry use the keyboard arrow keys to scroll down to the entry you want and then press shift+delete, don't hover over it with the mouse.
To clear all omnibox data just press ctrl+shift+del while in Chrome and clear browsing history from the beginning of time.
but every morning when I come into work after resuming my laptop from standby, it's hung up, used up all my windows socket handles and I need to end all the Chrome processes and start again.
Something has definately gone badly wrong since about Chrome 36 on Windows.
With the addition of the 'background' programs now loaded by default the probability of system instability increases dramatically. I've noticed a degradation in performance even after blocking all the background nonsense I never wanted or needed. Comparing the code to something like Opera you can literally see the differences in architecture.
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I find it's Google Sync that's the problem. I go into my google settings on their web page and it says I'm syncing something ridiculous like 64,000 bookmarks. I clear it and it keeps gradually increasing even though I have added no new bookmarks.
Windows is nothing compared to Chrome on Android though, it'd freeze for 20 seconds every time I opened it. In the end I just disabled Chrome sync and that fixed it.
Only takes so long before X browser ( indeed any type of app ) has more and more bolt ons made and the original source tree is expanded and expanded with stuff is was never originally designed to have attached. The compiled software just gets slower and more bogged down. Witness Firefox, lightning fast and the best browser when it first arrived, these days it's tired and need to go on a serious diet.
I still prefer Chrome over the others, never had an serious problems and indeed found it to be to usually the best browser for getting nasty bloated web apps working properly, where IE or FF would collapse. I think Google need to stop tinkering and leave it alone.
"Only takes so long before X browser ( indeed any type of app ) has more and more bolt ons made and the original source tree is expanded and expanded with stuff is was never originally designed to have attached. The compiled software just gets slower and more bogged down. Witness Firefox, lightning fast and the best browser when it first arrived, these days it's tired and need to go on a serious diet.
I still prefer Chrome over the others, never had an serious problems and indeed found it to be to usually the best browser for getting nasty bloated web apps working properly, where IE or FF would collapse. I think Google need to stop tinkering and leave it alone."
I think you've hit several nails well and truly on the head there. The effort to turn a browser into an app execution environment is really screwing up the whole basic idea of a browser. At the same time the user experience of web apps is awful; they're the worst ever for stupid things (unmovable 'dialog' boxes, no such thing as two apps in view at the same time, etc), and they're slow and often buggy as hell.
Windows 8's Metro environment is arguably akin to a polished up web app look and feel (one app in view at any one time, big clunky unmoveable things, a restricted GUI widget set, etc). That's not done so great. What makes anyone think that a web apps are ever going to be as good as that, let alone better? One of the better web apps I've seen it the web view dished up by modern Exchange servers. It's OK at best, but it's certainly no where near as nice to use as Outlook.
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