Chrome - causing hard drive to Thrash

[Segnosaur]

I seem to be having a strange issue...

I have an older laptop running Windows 7 that I use as a media center. (Given the fact that Win7 is past end of life, I don't use it for anything critical or that depends on security...)

Its an older machine, only 2GB of memory, but fast enough for what I was using it for.

However, lately it seems like every time I start Google Chrome (version 108.0.5359.125), the hard drive starts to thrash. According to task manager/performance monitor, both the system process and chrome.exe tasks are reading millions of bits from the chrome.dll every second. (That seems to be the main focus of the disk access.)

Still roughly ~300-400MB of memory left. CPU usage fluctuates a bit.

Any idea what the issue might be? Some chrome setting I am overlooking? A virus that might have gotten by malware bytes? Haven't turned up anything on google searches yet.

(The machine is due for a replacement, or I could wipe out Windows and install Linux, but then I have to move a bunch of bookmarks over, reinstall various applications, etc. So I'd like to delay the effort at least for a little while.)

 

[Mongrel]

It sounds like it's running out of memory and is using your hard drive as a swap file, 2GB is minimum spec for the 64bit version

You could pick up some cheap RAM and that would probably fix the problem, the 300ish MB is probably reserved by Windows probably for the GPU

 

[Darat]

I seem to be having a strange issue...

I have an older laptop running Windows 7 that I use as a media center. (Given the fact that Win7 is past end of life, I don't use it for anything critical or that depends on security...)

Its an older machine, only 2GB of memory, but fast enough for what I was using it for.

However, lately it seems like every time I start Google Chrome (version 108.0.5359.125), the hard drive starts to thrash. According to task manager/performance monitor, both the system process and chrome.exe tasks are reading millions of bits from the chrome.dll every second. (That seems to be the main focus of the disk access.)

Still roughly ~300-400MB of memory left. CPU usage fluctuates a bit.

Any idea what the issue might be? Some chrome setting I am overlooking? A virus that might have gotten by malware bytes? Haven't turned up anything on google searches yet.

(The machine is due for a replacement, or I could wipe out Windows and install Linux, but then I have to move a bunch of bookmarks over, reinstall various applications, etc. So I'd like to delay the effort at least for a little while.)

It's amazing how the wheel turns, Chrome when it was the plucky underdog was resource light, now that it's the gorilla in the room it's a bloody resource hog. (Tried to get another animal into that description but couldn't manage it )


You could try something like this add-on: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-tab-discard/jhnleheckmknfcgijgkadoemagpecfol?hl=en

 

[BrettM]

Maybe your cache is full. If you surf a lot, it is amazing how quickly your cache fills up.

 

[Segnosaur]

It sounds like it's running out of memory and is using your hard drive as a swap file, 2GB is minimum spec for the 64bit version

But it doesn't seem to be accessing the swap space. Its accessing chrome.dll. (Well, reading it anyways.)

The only time I see it reading/writing to the swap file is when I have multiple applications open (which isn't the case here.)

 

[Norman Alexander]

But it doesn't seem to be accessing the swap space. Its accessing chrome.dll. (Well, reading it anyways.)

The only time I see it reading/writing to the swap file is when I have multiple applications open (which isn't the case here.)

Perhaps a faulty DLL? I know it sounds trite, but have you tried reinstalling?

 

[Segnosaur]

Perhaps a faulty DLL? I know it sounds trite, but have you tried reinstalling?

A faulty DLL (or faulty executable) is also possible.

Haven't tried reinstalling yet. Wanted to avoid that so I don't have to worry about bookmarks, browser extensions, etc.

 

[rjh01]

Can you do a defrag?
Check what else is running. Delete everything that is not essential.
Remove all add-ons to Chrome.
I would also suggest removing the computer from the Internet.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Just to toss in another suggestion.

You could try installing a second, independent copy of Chrome and see it it does the same. A bit of Googling seems to say this is possible. It may involve something called Google Chrome Portable.

 

[jeremyp]

Perhaps a faulty DLL? I know it sounds trite, but have you tried reinstalling?

I would expect a corrupt DLL to crash the application.

Anyway, googling the issue, I found a number of sites that don't directly address it but do provide some useful check lists to follow e.g.

https://www.guidingtech.com/fix-google-chromes-high-disk-usage-on-windows-10-11/

Other things you might look at are disabling Chrome extensions and disabling AV temporarily to see if it is any of these that are causing the problem.

 

[catsmate]

Just to toss in another suggestion.

You could try installing a second, independent copy of Chrome and see it it does the same. A bit of Googling seems to say this is possible. It may involve something called Google Chrome Portable.

Chrome tends to have issues with Chrome portable running simultaneously.

 

[Segnosaur]

Can you do a defrag?
Check what else is running. Delete everything that is not essential.
Remove all add-ons to Chrome.

I do plan to do a defrag. Just takes a long time. Did check for other things that were running, and other than standard background processes nothing jumped out as significant.

 

[Segnosaur]

Just to toss in another suggestion.

You could try installing a second, independent copy of Chrome and see it it does the same. A bit of Googling seems to say this is possible. It may involve something called Google Chrome Portable.

I was unaware of a portable version of Chrome.

Actually that was a great suggestion. Allows me to keep the old chrome available as a backup (for bookmarks, etc.) but install a 'new' chrome to see how it works.

And... weirdly enough... there are points where the portable version does excessive reads from chrome.dll, but overall system performance does not degrade like the regularly installed version of chrome.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I was unaware of a portable version of Chrome.

Actually that was a great suggestion. Allows me to keep the old chrome available as a backup (for bookmarks, etc.) but install a 'new' chrome to see how it works.

And... weirdly enough... there are points where the portable version does excessive reads from chrome.dll, but overall system performance does not degrade like the regularly installed version of chrome.

I first put my fingers to a computer keyboard (a Burroughs E101, since you ask) some 60 years ago. One day I will figure out how the damn things work.

 

[rjh01]

Do you realize you can export bookmarks, then import them later?
- Top right corner, click on the three vertical dots
- Bookmarks
- Bookmark manager
- Top right corner, click on the three dots (the ones below the three dots you pressed before)
- Export bookmarks (or import)

 

[Norman Alexander]

I would expect a corrupt DLL to crash the application.

Not necessarily. It may be partially sitting on a failing disk block. So it needs multiple read retries to load each time it is accessed instead of one. Hence the suggestion of reinstalling - it gets put on different, gooderer disk blocks.

Or it may simply be fragged badly.

Before defrag, run a disk check. It may pick up something about failed blocks. But the defrag would be my first step here.

 

[Segnosaur]

Do you realize you can export bookmarks, then import them later?

Yeah I know. In fact I exported them from the installed version of chrome and imported them into the portable version that was recommended earlier.

But, I've been through enough upgrades, repairs, and configuration changes that 'go wrong' for some reason that I'm extremely wary of making any sort of major change. I just wanted to see if there was some sort of alternative to uninstall/reinstall of chrome to know if it would be worth it. (I didn't want to run the risk of breaking something, only to find out "yeah its a common problem... you just had to click this option in setup".)