browsers gone wild!

[pelham456]

somewhere between the 10 min and 1 hr mark online, my browsers take down my display. as in, display looks frozen, mouse stops working, everything just "hangs" for interminable stretches. sometimes with the "processing" spinning circle up front; sometimes without. or sometimes with it there but frozen itself.

and it's not just the browsers affected -- EVERY window hangs, from orbit to qTorrent to acrobat to VLC; even the TASK MANAGER. it can take 15-20 mins just to switch tabs/windows!

but only "human interface" functions are affected -- if orbit or qTorrent were DLing something when the hang began, they'll continue along no problem. of course, i might not KNOW that for 40 mins or more, but when the situation finally "pops" and screen etc springs back to life, i can see the DLs had continued in the background the whole time. i just couldn't VIEW them or ADJUST them in any way during that period.

(i should point out that typing into a LOCAL TEXT FILE is no better. can be like 7 mins per letter entered!)

if i can get the task manager open and KILL OFF the browsers (20-30 min process, minimum), everything returns to normal. so it's def the browsers causing all this.

i should note that i've switched from IE to FF to orbit to chrome to safari to dodge this problem, but nothing ever changes. within an hour of having ANY browser open, my display just gives up.

so what's the likely cause? malware, virus, bloatware, display drivers, or some sort of display HARDWARE issue?

i long thought it was a RAM issue -- made worse as i cram my HDD to the point that even page swaps are affected -- but after dumping half my files and doing one massive defrag, things are still no better. smooth sailing for 20 mins (say), 2 hours of hell, then -- suddenly -- smooth sailing once again.

i should note, also, that it's never RECURRED doing a session, afaicr. that is, once the "pop" happens and everything starts working again, i cannot recall it ever going into a SECOND hang later on. PC really works great once u ride out that first torture session.

but one is still one too many. HELP!

[pelham456]

related problem: is there a way to bolster the task manager? back in win98, it was easy to kill off runaway apps. but ever since then (XP, win7, win8), the task manager hangs with the rest of the PC. i have complained about this before.

with my current probs (above), it oft takes 40 mins just to get AT the task manager. then maybe another 40 for it to notice me frantically clicking "end process".

o for the days when ctrl-alt-del sprang right to action!

[SynchroDub]

My only advice would be to get either a new HDD or an SSD drive.
Cramming an HDD to the point that it almost becomes full means that it's not going to last much longer. Not to mention that having a full HDD affects the overall PC performance.
So I believe your HDD is just simply dying out from all the wear and tear caused by cramming it full.
Backup any important files you have onto an external drive, and replace the HDD asap, if you can.

[Lonewolf]

I'll chime in second, I guess... which browsers?

My first thought... memory leak in one (or more browsers). If so, do you use things like Firemin (for Firefox) or The Great Suspender (for Chrome), to minimize memory when in use?

Or, since your issue runs across more than one browser, it could... could... be a virus. (Have you run Malwarebytes or similar AV prog?) But my hunch is that you might have an add-on or extension in one of the browsers that's causing the problem. If that's the case, I'd suspect Firefox, as I had issues with some of their add-ons.

And one curiosity-type question... does Windows Explorer restart during any of these hangs, or directly afterward? That could indicate a disk issue, which should prompt you to run a disk check from a DOS prompt. I had to do that a week ago, and no issues since... just a thought.

[pelham456]

happens in all browsers, in fact forcing me out of FF and IE over to chrome. which ended up worse than they were!

worse yet, chrome keeps popping up this "browser not responding. wait? abort?" message...like EVERY 30 SECONDS! it is the bane of my existence.

u can't ignore it. anything ur doing/typing freezes -- need to go click "wait" to continue -- and sometimes the half-typed stuff u were doing disappears when u return! EVERY 30 SECONDS! ALL DAY!!!!

how the F@#$%^&*!! do i turn this OFF?!



FF and IE hanging just as badly, but -- to their credit -- they don't have these endless popups.

[wolf902]

Used to happen to me. Then I got a new computer with more memory, which seems to have fixed it.

So the suggestion appears to be more memory.

Hope this helps.

[zero33]

Had something similar happening to me a while back.
Turned out the batteries in my wireless keyboard, and mouse were going bad.

[pelham456]

i'd long suspected it was a RAM issue; how do i check?

iinm, i have 4G RAM, but after all these probs started cropping up, i'm beginning to wonder whether 3G of it has burnt out or something.

it's a laptop, btw. so side batteries etc not a factor.

and the problem is mainly BROWSER-related. that is, if any are open, they bloat and tank everything. notepad or VLC or anything else equally at risk of a 20 min "hang" at that point.

with them CLOSED however, i rarely have these probs. and even with them OPEN, anything running in the BACKGROUND is unaffected -- orbit or uTor or w/e keeps on chugging np. i might not KNOW it for 40 more mins (can't get display to update!), but when things finally *jerk* back to normal, i'll see that the DLs have gotten their full 40 mins worth.

and if it's a SHORT download...grrrr...let's just say that i'm now in the odd position of spending an hour or more FINDING or LOADING a podcast, which might DL in 30 secs!

surfing has become my #1 most time-consuming activity. i dread everytime i have to GOOGLE a phone number or anything now...

[-dAb-]

I would suspect the hard drive is dying. With only 4GB RAM it's going to need a fairly large swap file, which any browser is going to use, and it's having trouble accessing the swapfile due to the drive dying.

Another issue could be you have the swapfile hard-coded to a very small size.

But I still think it's a IO error with the drive; have you checked event viewer for actual errors? I didn't even know I had a bad drive until I saw a slew of bad block errors on one external drive that had started affecting my entire USB chain with IO errors. Unplugging the drive INSTANTLY made the computer respond much faster. Of course that meant I needed to back up the drive immediately, which was real fun with the IO errors (took 3 DAYS to copy the files to a new drive)

[carolina73]

I would definitely turn off automatic updates as a start. The Browser, the OS, Adobe your antivirus... to see if it helps. It can be that your system is forcing updates which will slow down your system and downloads combined with the your internet connection speed slowing. Kill switches didn't work because the mouse and keyboard won't work.

I suffer the same problems also when I have too many browser pages opened, which is a bad habit of mine. All the solutions that I read so far basically told me not to open so many pages. Torrents use multiple sites so they are basically doing the same thing. Stay away from Youtube while you are downloading.

My old firewall let me easily see all my connections. When I thought I only was connected to 20 or so pages, one look at the firewall showed about 5 to 10 times that many connections. I started figuring out which ones were unnecessary and uses BlockSite to permanently prevent them from connecting. Hardware/Software like graphics were constantly connecting without permission.