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Google Chrome is Freezing Intermittently With the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, Users Say (neowin.net)

Posted by msmash on from the take-note dept.

Several users who have updated their computers to Windows 10 April 2018 Update are reporting that Chrome is freezing their machines. From a report: I have now used the April 2018 Update for nearly 24 hours and the same problem has presented itself no less than five times. For a machine - which was working perfectly prior to the update - with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD, I naturally resorted to Reddit and Microsoft forum threads to see if others were experiencing the issue. It appears that several users on Reddit (spotted by Softpedia) with machines sporting varying configurations are experiencing the problem as well, and the only fix to it is the one I found too; that is, putting the laptop to sleep using the power button or closing the lid.

31 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. That's the least of it by JMJimmy · · Score: 3

    I switched away from Firefox recently for various reasons and Chrome has been a sore disappointment. Tabs crash constantly, GIFS stop working (shows first frame then goes black), the addon ecosystem is worse than Firefox - there's more of them, just poorly made and option poor.

    There's not a single browser on the market today that I would actively recommend. Just an array of mediocrity.

    1. Re:That's the least of it by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      we're forced to run 'modern' browsers at work, and even on linux and win10, chromium (I won't run chrome, no matter what) freezes at least once a day. usually its the fucking ADS that cause chromium to lock up, but it sure does lock up solid, almost every single day.

      my ancient firefox (which does have security issues; it dates at least 3 years ago) works fine, though. I have all my plugins working from years ago, my adblockers, js blocker, etc. I don't get junk with that setup and it stops the 'toxic web' (I should register that phrase, btw) with all the configured filters. I can't configure enough filters on chromium to make browsing safe again.

      yeah, the web is horribly ruined, 'webmasters' are the lowest of our programming brothers (phone app makers are tied for being sleaziest, though) and we need good filtering to make the web usable with all the corruption and BS out there.

      its funny how people sing the praises of chrome but for me, its a really bad browser.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    2. Re:That's the least of it by bigman2003 · · Score: 4, Funny

      First, I hate Chrome...and the 'new web' with never ending pages. I am not a genius, but when I've been on Reddit for 30 minutes on a never ending page, I think "God, how much RAM is this thing sucking up right now?"

      Obviously that is not really Chrome's fault...but the two go hand in hand. The same B-holes that love never ending pages, have a hard-on for Chrome.

      As an aside, the new Reddit update has some problems with my account, and I can't load anything anymore. Good riddance.

      Second, not sure what you meant regarding your last comment about Microsoft's best interests- But if I owned Microsoft, I would be pretty happy to screw up Google's crap. Google's actions regarding Windows Phone were pitiful. If you think Google gives one crap about users in the world, you're wrong. They were more than happy to break every attempt to get YouTube on Windows Phone- suing Microsoft for an app that was just a web wrapper...

      I think Microsoft should just keep breaking Chrome. Google deserves a kick in their testes.

      --
      No reason to lie.
    3. Re:That's the least of it by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree that the web is 'ruined'. I blame Marketing departments everywhere. I've been a web programmer for a loooong time, and for a long time we were winning the fight of, "No, you can't put huge pictures everywhere! No, the content can't be all videos! No, we can't have ads in 6 places on the website!"

      But then Marketing comes in and shows how much more 'engagement' we can get- etc. etc. and the actual user experience goes into the toilet.

      Now the marketing people (literally usually college grads on their first job) have been raised with the shit-hole the web has become, and it is normal. No qualms about shoving 3 or 4 more pieces of crap on the webpage.

      Now it is better to trick people into signing up for content "give us your email address in order to read the article" than it is to provide good content. Because then they can say they have reached 10,000 new people this month- who will never, ever open, or even see, the emails that come in.

      I hate those people.

      --
      No reason to lie.
  2. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts.... by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 2

    .... that the problem has something to do with hardware acceleration, the endless fountain of browser glitches.

    --
    "Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
    1. Re:I'd bet dollars to doughnuts.... by Vapula · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Function A creates an element B and associate a function C to the "onclick" property of B before linking B to the DOM tree

      C being created inside A, it inherits the closure of A in which you find a variable pointing to B

      We have DOM -> B -> C -> closure -> B cycle created

      When B is removed from DOM, the references loop still stays, every object keeps at least one reference to it and can't be freed by the garbage collect.

      Propre way to do it is to clear the onclick of B when you remove it from the DOM to break the cycle... but most web sites don't care and this leads to browsers memory usage growing and growing.

    2. Re:I'd bet dollars to doughnuts.... by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And guess what encourages this antipattern? jQuery. And guess what virtually every website on the Internet uses these days for virtually everything? jQuery.

      Not that I'm saying jQuery isn't a godsend, it is, but you really wish the thing had been designed in a way that doesn't encourage closures for everything.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:I'd bet dollars to doughnuts.... by KlomDark · · Score: 2

      No, not jQuery.

      Blame the newfangled Single Page App (SPA) frameworks like Angular - that's where this nonsense comes from.

      Most SPA sites don't even use jQuery anymore. So you're going to have to target your anger towards something newer.

  3. Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This would be the first time a microsoft update has caused problems for a rival's products or programs.

    Because this would be the first ever recorded such instances I deem it to be highly unlikely.

    ...so nothing to see here.

    1. Re:Nothing to see here by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Program used to work fine, Microsoft updates OS, program suddenly crashes?

      How is that the program developers' fault?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

    3. Re:Nothing to see here by Vapula · · Score: 2

      isn't it the job of the OS to make sure that an individual program can't freeze the whole system ?

    4. Re:Nothing to see here by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, if this was Apple instead of Microsoft, the answer would be, "Yeah, and? We updated the OS. It's not our fault if you can't keep up." They do it all the time, the most recent one being the whole DisplayLink fiasco.

      Microsoft, however, goes out of it's way to maintain backward compatibility. To the point that they will even recreate bugs in older versions of the OS that applications happen (rightly or wrongly) to depend on. So when something like this happens, it's reasonable for eyebrows to be raised.

  4. Windows updating too fast to be stable by xack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why enterprises and power users are staying with LTSB, Windows 7 and even XP. We don't want sudden updates breaking our stuff. Microsoft needs to learn to slow down and do proper tetsing instead of this Windows as a service fad.

    1. Re:Windows updating too fast to be stable by Killall+-9+Bash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      More like beta testing as a service. (BTaaS). Blame Google for popularizing that shit.... (and also blame Microsoft for copying every bad idea Google's had for the last 15 years)

      The quality of testing has increased dramatically since Aperture made employee testing mandatory.

      --
      "Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
    2. Re:Windows updating too fast to be stable by iampiti · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Exactly. An OS is supposed to be stable. Please stop making changes to it all the freaking time.
      The agile development process doesn't belong in an OS. Alas, at this point a change in direction for Windows seems very unlikely so it will have to be use something else or put up with this stupidity

  5. Re:Yup! by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    And I checked the resource usage, one tab was using 2 gigs of RAM for some reason! ACK!

    So you're saying you’re not seeing anything out of the ordinary?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  6. Not only Chrome by denisbergeron · · Score: 4, Informative

    I install the new update yesterday, make the mandatory 5 reboots. This morning, the window's login screen was freezing for a good 5 minutes...

    Then when I finally get there, windows ask me to change my login credential... and freeze... then updating language module and freeze.. adding I don't know how many new keyboard in the keyboard bar....

    When, we compare this to mature OS like Ubuntu or Mint... Windows take like 3 hours to update on my i5 12g ram 10krpm computer after the download... without counting the reboots... Ubuntu ou Mint can date like 15 minutes on the same hardware..

    Windows is not ready for business ... ;-)

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    1. Re:Not only Chrome by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Welcome to 2018. This is how we test software now.

      Why bother testing all the popular bits of software on numerous hardware configurations when you can just do a gradual roll out and wait for users to do your QA for you? Rather than employ people to find bugs, just load the OS up with telemetry.

      Everyone does it. Android and iOS app updates are rolled out slowly, and you can cancel the roll out via the dashboard if you notice abnormally high numbers of crashes.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Re:Yup! by Vapula · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People let their browser open longer and longer on the same page, opening more pages...

    And many web sites (Facebook to begin with) allocate objects, create circular references and don't break the reference cycle because "dropping" the object, leading to a cycle of objects (elements, functions and closures) which can't be freed by the garbage collect.

    Don't blame the browser, blame the web sites creator who don't care about cleaning their junk.

  8. Windows ain't done till Chrome don't run by Steve1952 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wait, sounds familiar somehow...

  9. People still use Chrome? by sremick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, flamebait subject. But hear me out... given the growing interest in data privacy and concern about the mining of our online activities, Chrome's horrendous tendency to take over all your computers' RAM and CPU, the latest Firefox being measurably faster than Chrome, aggressive and intrusive bundling of trojan Chrome installs into unrelated apps, and now Chrome pulling an IE in pushing proprietary markup that encourages the making of websites that ONLY work in Chrome, why are people still giving Google a pass and using an inferior/arrogant browser when there is a better option?

    1. Re:People still use Chrome? by ilsaloving · · Score: 2

      The worst part is that Chrome has now taken the lead in browser market share by a wide margin.

      This is IE6 all over again, cause Google is pushing all their proprietary crap (like AMP), which benefits no one but themselves.

  10. Shared Blame? by Voyager529 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Full disclosure, I'm not the biggest Chrome fan, and not the biggest Google fan, either. However, I don't generally get caught up in browser wars; I don't generally tell Chrome users to use other browsers if they're happy with it and their sites load.

    However, about a month ago, Chrome started acting really weird. Sites would time out, or take over a minute to load, on well-spec'd computers with no malware and wired network connections. After trying every tweak I could think of, I tried those same sites in Firefox and they loaded in the 2-3 seconds they were supposed to. Over the past month, that experience has repeated itself across users with nothing in common except Chrome, and "switching to Firefox" completely resolving their issues.

    I'm sure the April update sucks; I'm hard pressed to point to a Win10 feature update that provided a useful feature that justified the update installation time. However, I'm hard pressed to not give Google at least some share of the blame when a number of users (some of which still using Windows 7) had issues with Chrome that were solved by switching to Firefox.

  11. Re:Yup! by danomac · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sounds like Microsoft and Google's telemetry collided and is causing chaos everywhere. The two threads are arguing about who gets to take what.

  12. Chrome witch hunt by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fake news! No crashes. Works perfe

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  13. and how is Edge browser running..? by xanadu113 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me guess... the Edge browser is running faster than ever..?

    It ain't done 'til Lotus won't run...

    --
    -Myke
  14. Re: Opera is pretty good by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    I am pretty satisfied with Opera on Android. It is the only browser on Android that I know of that you can force zoom to be enabled and it rewraps the resized text to be justified to your screen size. That is a very powerful feature.

  15. Re: Yup! by Monster_user · · Score: 3, Insightful

    RAM is a expense, expenses must be controlled. The more a web browser takes up, the less of the same resource is available for other tasks.

    Whe you only have to budget for one PC with 16GB of RAM, it may not seem like a lot. When you have to budget for hundreds or even thousands of PCs, against a Walmart razor thin margin ecosystem, 16GB is an incredible expense. And one can't raise margins to cover the cost of a better rig, because the lowest bidder wins. This trickles down to the employee who can't afford more than $400 per cycle for a PC, and whose 4GB/dual core box isn't past the 8 year cycle yet.

    Excessive memory usage by websites and browsers, and excessive bandwidth usage by websites is both greed and gluttony, and is disrespectful to the working class. Its like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, except in this case that pot of gold is affordable computing. By the time we get 10mbps 4G LTE across the country, the web is going to require 100mbps minimum. Afford 16 GB of RAM, and the minimum is now 64GB.

  16. Re:Yup! by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

    Allowing the stability of YOUR system to be dependent on remote hosts coding correctly is folly. Even if most sites comply, some won't. A fraction of those may even be malicious. Browsers need to be able to detect when something is going off the rails and kill a thread -- or at least suspend it and ask the user -- because expecting not to encounter intentional abuse is tantamount to wearing a big "pwn me" sign.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  17. Re: So google chrome is being google chrome? by Monster_user · · Score: 2

    Possible, perhaps. Efficient and bug free on initial push/deployment? Unlikely. Such features would more likely cause the features you are describing by the browser trying to manage all that with little telemetry or other feedback data on what the errors or issues actually are. Also not really worth spending time writing a LOT of code to fix a problem only one or two people have. Wouldn't surprise me if those changes reach $1,000,000 in development costs before it was all said and done.

    As for suggestions:
    You say bandwidth is not an issue, nor does the significantly above average RAM quantity appear to be insufficient, so,...
    120 tabs open and bandwidth isn't a factor???

    1. Get an SSD. Make sure there is no bottleneck for simultaneous reads and writes to randomly accessed cache data.

    2. Try disabling other services and other apps to reduce the difficulty of managing multiple threads.

    3. Ideally, as a rule of thumb one shouldn't let the number of tabs exceed 1.5 times the number of cores on the machine, to avoid contention of resources. Especially when a heavy resource page like a video stream is being displayed. Heavy resource pages, such as multimedia streams, will likely need two or three cores exclusively to avoid contention of resources for an uninterrupted stream.

    4. Update your graphics card drivers.

    5. Get a dedicated graphics card for proper hardware accelleration. Intel should be able to handle a single 1080p video fine. 120 tabs of hardware accellerated content alongside even a single 1080p stream will likely require a more powerful GPU.

    6. Make sure you're hardwired in using gigabit ethernet. Wifi introduces a bunch of issues into the bandwidth stream, especially when the connection/channel is shared by multiple devices.