Google Chrome being really (and I mean REALLY) SLOW

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Danzas4321

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Jul 4, 2013
10
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10,560
Hey guys. I've been a Chrome user for nearly two years, but recently I'm having a big issue. Every time i open the browser it struggles to even open the home page or tabs like the settings. Its not my internet, as i have about 25Mbps down and 7 up. Other browsers are working fine, but I prefer Chrome!
 
Solution
To anyone encountering similar issues... try disabling hardware acceleration.... it was a tenfold improvement for me on my laptop.

To disable it... type "chrome:settings" in the address bar, click Advanced Settings, then uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available" under the System header. Close all open Chrome browser instances and restart Chrome.

Chrome had always ran really well for me.... until rather recently. This seemed to fix my biggest problem of late. Give it a shot and let me know... curious how it works for others. Not sure why HW acceleration seems to be the culprit, nor what exactly changed that caused this issue.

ben1492

Estimable
Dec 21, 2014
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4,510
All of the above would probably have worked...if I got that far. My problem, it turns out, is that I installed the 32-bit Chrome version on a 64-bit Windows 8.1 computer. Silly, I know. In my defense, the first download option that comes up is for Windows 7/Vista/8/8.1 32-bit, so that's what I originally went with. If the slow problem comes back up, I'll try some of these other solutions. But for now, it's humming just fine with lots of acceleration and lot of extensions (Drive, Motorola Connect, hangouts, and Google Chrome running in the background) hanging off of it.
 

rogerthat1946

Honorable
Dec 21, 2013
3
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10,510


That doesn`t do squat.
X64 or not, it still grinds to a halt.

I have a Haswell i7 PC with 16Gb of RAM with an SSD & Windows 8.1 all fully updated and Chrome x64 slows down like 1990 and Windows 3.

Its just CRAP.

That said; all the aforementioned `fixes` work for a short while.
Such as `clearing Cache` etc etc etc etc etc....
But its ALL Temporary.

So does Disabling some Extensions for a fix (which I have had to do just to post this response).

This is the quickest its been for weeks. Usually it crawls along after five minutes of the previous fixes.
Uninstalling & re-installing does SQUAT after a few days its back to CRAP.

These Disabled extensions seem to be fine for now though.
 

falconlovers lord

Estimable
Dec 27, 2014
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4,510
Hey I had the same problem too. I had a brand new laptop and simply trying to load chrome took like 5 min. I even rebooted the computer to see if chrome would work then, but it didn't. But I found a very simple solution to this problem :D. All you need to do is wait for chrome to load (don't worry, this is gonna be the last time you'll ever see chrome load so slowly). And in the top right corner of the page, there will be three horizontal lines beside a star. You click that, and simply press "Relauch Chrome on Windows 8." It won't work at first, because what u need to do is you need to restart your computer, go back and click the Chrome icon on your desktop. Tada! it's google chrome in windows 8 version! And guess what? This way, you don't need to pay $3 to get the app! I just installed chrome on desktop internet and then i relaunched chrome on windows 8.
 

Ferenzee

Estimable
Feb 28, 2014
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4,510
Do you have Bitdefender antivirus installed? If so go turn off the firewall and chrome will back to its blazing fast self. I stumbled upon this thread trying to figure out WHY bitdefender firewall is killing my chrome, but i just cant find an answer... You know for being the best antivirus I could buy I'm starting to regret my descision going with them.
 

quincarter

Estimable
Jan 19, 2015
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4,510
Disabling Hardware Acceleration in the Advanced settings helped me. It has improved 10 fold. I think someone else here actually posted this answer too-- just further reassuring that it's what worked for me as an avid chrome user. Settings> Advanced Settings > Scroll all the way to the bottom. Should be a checkbox. http://i.imgur.com/EMCIBnD.png?1
 

TrueGaming11

Distinguished
Mar 17, 2011
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18,510
I'm sorry for bumping an old thread, but I just wanted to confirm that this worked for me (disabling HW acceleration).

I read a few topics about this feature and it says that it somehow improves playback performance with flash videos.. how's that when it clearly did the opposite for most of us? and when I opened the settings in "chrome://gpu" it says "Flash: Hardware accelerated" even though I disabled it in the main advanced settings.. or is this another feature not related? I'm just curious..
 

subwayrocket

Distinguished
Aug 9, 2009
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18,510
same prob here ...chrome slow as molasses. disabled hardware acceleration as suggested above, closed and restarted chrome...NO LUCK . Firefox and IE are almost instantaneous wheresas chrome takes 5-10 seconds to load some bookmarked pages ...some load in maybe 3 seconds ...it's late, will try tomorrow. Thanks all who posted suggestions though !
 

Tony Bensley

Honorable
Oct 19, 2013
1
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10,510


I'm seriously beginning to think that the ONLY solution is to wean myself off of Google Chrome completely! As convenient as I HAD found it to be, it has been so effing slow of late, and NONE of the aforementioned solutions seem to work (I just lost a HUGE download 3/4 of the way through because Google Chrome stopped working yet again, and am now resorting to using IE for this purpose! AARRGGHH!!!!) for me!

The bottom line is, why the frig should I have to worry about having to search for Chrome fixes every couple of months, when the latest version inevitably FAILS yet again? I am so sick to the back teeth of this stupid B.S!

I'm using my IE Browser to type this! NUFF SAID!!!!

 

phatsnake

Distinguished
Feb 1, 2011
11
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18,560


THANK YOU KIND SIR, I can confirm that this solution works! Those with Bitdefender BEWARE!!! You have no idea how frustrated I was! I've been trying to troubleshoot it for weeks. God damn it Bitdefender I'll contact them and try to find a solution for this. Thanks again.
 

NorfolkBoy

Estimable
Feb 10, 2015
1
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4,510
I have given up on chrome for now and have switched to Firefox. It's much, much faster. Have imported all my Bookmarks from chrome and gmail works fine. Chrome was taking several seconds to open maps or calendar from gmail page but it's almost instant on Firefox. Are you listening chrome?

 

Niff

Estimable
Feb 18, 2015
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4,510
I've been having the same problem for days now. I did a system refresh, restore, re install, plus all the other settings tweaks suggested here. I went to IE and opened a page, it was asking to be set as default browser, I denied it as the default browser and went back to Chrome. Pages, even images, are snapping up fast as ever. Strange, but perhaps it will be a fix for others also.
 

Pro74

Estimable
Aug 23, 2014
1
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4,510


Nothing you can do. I have seen this change of policy in google for some years, now. I can't understand what the geniuses in their headquarters have in their minds, but it doesn't seem to work. I have even contacted them via feedback. When chrome beta first launched was faster than every browser around; 40 iterations later and it looks like 40 times slower and consuming much more than Vista was at its prime. Just wait till the IT department at google wakes up.
 

dcrocker

Distinguished
Nov 26, 2011
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18,510
I've also found Chrome really slow for about the last 3 weeks. I already have hardware acceleration disabled, I'm not running BitDefender, and I already tried disabling the only significant plugin I was running (Adblock Plus). So it's back to FireFox for me.
 

Maria Lucia

Estimable
Mar 4, 2015
1
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4,510


Thank you too, Jeff Buffington.. My Chrome's working a lot better, for now, at least.. Hope it'll stay that way.. I'm on MacBook Pro.. :D

 

Hazy Jay

Honorable
Mar 2, 2013
1
0
10,510
I'd like to add that HW Acceleration has made no difference to my really really slow Chrome. Chrome is now all but useless. I do not have the time to wait 3 minutes for a page to load, or 2 minutes for text to appear that I typed minutes ago. I despise firefox and IE, but it's looking like I'm going to have to use them just to be able to use the internet!

Worlds biggest company screws up mass usage portal. Who'd have thought it!
 

AkhandChakra

Estimable
Mar 15, 2015
1
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4,510
Chrome is really really really really SLOW for the last 15-20 days in my Windows 10 Tech Preview (desktop mode). I've 50Mbps always from comcast, still youtube is slow, netflix is slow (though it works fine in my xbox one), even google maps is slow, daily motion is slow. simple google search is also slow. i've checked for anti virus none, checked unwanted plugins none, no extn running in chrome. Not sure y chrome had become so slow, been using it since it came several yrs ago. really annoying.

pathetic thing is its a new laptop with 32GB RAm, NVidia 770 GTX card, i7 proc, Intel SSD. Nothing else from hardware or connection wise. BTW, chrome is fast in my iPad or Note 3. Only from this laptop is slow. So, I feel Chrome has some serious issue with Win 10 Tech Preview side.

As suggested, I've uninstalled BitDefender and disabled H/W acceleration, will post an update how it works after these 2 changes.
 
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