Chrome vs. IE - Interesting thing happened tonight

[DocGreen]

I've always been very pro Chrome/Firefox and against IE. I have all 3 installed on my computers, but use Chrome for damn near everything. Tonight, however, Chrome has failed me. Here's the story:

So I'm sitting here in my man-cave catching up on a day's worth of Facebook. Found an interesting video someone had posted, so I opened the Youtube video in a new tab. At this point, I had my Facebook newsfeed open in tab 1, and Youtube opened in tab 2. I decided that I wanted to watch the video in full screen, and that it might as well be in HD... because it can be... lol. So I change the quality from 360p to 720p... it skips a bit, but resumes playing. Then I hit the fullscreen button... and my computer grinds to a halt. The audio continues to play, but the video refused to do anything. I got maybe 1 frame every 15-20 seconds. So I open Task Manager... processor is at 99%. Sort the processes list by processor usage, and Chrome & Avast are fighting for the top spot with each using around 40%. After closing and re-opening Chrome to try again (a few times), I decided to try IE.

So I open IE... bring up the very same 2 tabs. Do the exact same thing I was doing in Chrome... and wouldn't ya know it, IE plays the video like a dream. Not only that, but my webpages are loading significantly faster as well! WTF?!

Has anyone else noticed any measurable decrease in Chrome's speed?

I of course planned to mess with disabling add-ons and extensions... but I haven't added anything new to Chrome in months, so if it were an add-on/extension causing the problem, it would have to be an update to an existing one that previously worked fine. I'm also a bit curious about Avast taking up so much of the processor at the same time... wondering how Avast & Chrome are interracting and if maybe I need to put the two of them in seperate corners until they can play nice together.

Thoughts?

 

[DocGreen]

Interesting addition.

Ran a speedtest with both browsers (using Comcast's servers).

IE Results:
Ping: 164
D/L: 11.96 Mbps (12.07 peak)
U/L: 3.20 Mbps (3.36 peak)

Chrome Results:
Ping: 35
D/L: 12.00 Mbps (12.13 peak)
U/L: 6.72 Mbps (6.76 peak)

I ran the tests 4 times per browser... alternating between IE and Chrome. The results of each test were the same. IE had significantly higher ping each time, as well as significantly lower upload speeds. Not sure what to make of this, since Chrome is loading pages visibly slower than IE, and using up significantly more processor power. More tests are needed.

 

[TechLady]

Hmmmm...that is surprising. Would be very interested to see what else you come up with. I'm an Avast & Chrome only user myself...

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Opening video links and other links that are posted on FB are known to be dangerous...a lot of infections have occurred from people that are click happy on those wildfire spam links from FB. I'd be scanning that computer for malware for the rest of the night after risking that.

Speedtests are done via multiple http connections using Flash. So you'll see differences in browsers based on how each works with Flash. Hence big differences.

 

[CLC]

Try disabling the Web Shield and recreating the problem. I used to use avast and I think I ran across a similar issue.

 

[PCX]

Are you by any chance running this on Windows 8. Chrome seems to suck pretty bad on Windows 8.

 

[angry_geek]

Look in your chrome extensions to see if flash is listed multiple times. It may be trying to run the wrong instance. If it is, disable all but the one listed in your chrome directory.

 

[DocGreen]

Opening video links and other links that are posted on FB are known to be dangerous...a lot of infections have occurred from people that are click happy on those wildfire spam links from FB. I'd be scanning that computer for malware for the rest of the night after risking that...

The video was posted by the White House's FB page and linked to their official YouTube channel. I'm assuming this one is probably safe.

Try disabling the Web Shield and recreating the problem. I used to use avast and I think I ran across a similar issue.

I'd already disabled Avast's browser plug-in before I encountered the issue because of the slow page load times I'd been noticing. I also tried disabling the AV all together and the problem persisted.

Are you by any chance running this on Windows 8. Chrome seems to suck pretty bad on Windows 8.

Windows 7.

Look in your chrome extensions to see if flash is listed multiple times. It may be trying to run the wrong instance. If it is, disable all but the one listed in your chrome directory.

Flash isn't listed under Extensions... but it is listed twice under the hidden Plugins list. One is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\23.0.1271.97\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll
And the other is:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_11_5_502_135.dll

I'll try disabling the one in the SysWOW64 folder and see what happens.

 

[DocGreen]

OK, so I disabled one of the Flash entries as angry_geek suggested, and here's what I got.

Repeating the steps from last night, I still had serious lag in the video. Not quite as bad as before, but it was still not watchable.

Opening task manager, I saw that the processor was still maxed at 100%. HOWEVER, when my focus was on the task manager instead of the web browser, the video started playing correctly! Switched focus back to the browser, and it got choppy again. After a couple times switching back and forth, I was finally able to watch the video full screen without any issue. Not sure what the deal is here.

 

[angry_geek]

You probably should try reinstalling chrome. Before you install it, though, be sure to delete the chrome directory in appdata\local\google. Log into chrome to enable synching; that way you won't lose all your passwords and bookmarks.

 

[DocGreen]

You probably should try reinstalling chrome. Before you install it, though, be sure to delete the chrome directory in appdata\local\google. Log into chrome to enable synching; that way you won't lose all your passwords and bookmarks.

Probably not a bad idea. Needed to be done anyways because I believe the existing Chrome install is per-user instead of all-users. (Always hated that about Chrome).


So is it just me then? Nobody else is noticing Chrome being slower?

 

[PC Ops]

I'm pretty sure the problem lies in Flash.
Did you try downloading/updating Adobe Flash to the latest version for both IE as non-IE? If not, give that a try and then compare them again.

 

[lan101]

I've noticed chrome audio gets choppy at times and has issues with shockwave crashing at times too.

If I have audio issues I usually just open in opera and it works fine there.

 

[CLC]

The only thing I ever changed in chrome that seemed to speed things up was "Predict network actions to improve page load performance" in advanced settings. I unchecked it and it seems to speed up performance, I read about it somewhere and decided to do it,can't remember why or where.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it may have had something to do with flash and facebook games but not completely sure.

 

[DocGreen]

I'm pretty sure the problem lies in Flash.
Did you try downloading/updating Adobe Flash to the latest version for both IE as non-IE? If not, give that a try and then compare them again.

To the best of my knowledge (and I may be wrong about this), I don't think you can manually update Flash in Chrome. I'm pretty sure Chrome has all the Flash stuff built in, and handles all the updates automatically.


As for Facebook, I have noticed that it uses a lot of resources... but then again, Facebook uses Flash, so... (I don't play FB games, btw... I have most of them blocked so I don't get the game requests. Hate those things)



I don't have the prediction service enabled... I did just disable the "web service to resolve navigation errors" and enabled the "do not track" setting. We'll see if that makes any difference in page loads.

 

[PC Ops]

To the best of my knowledge (and I may be wrong about this), I don't think you can manually update Flash in Chrome. I'm pretty sure Chrome has all the Flash stuff built in, and handles all the updates automatically.

I didn't know that. I use Firefox and never encountered Chrome issues work-related. So I did some reading and found that Chrome's internal Flash doesn't always play well with the OS installation of Flash. And since you also use Firefox you probably also have an OS installation of Flash.

The thing I found was to open chrome://plugins/, expand details and see if there are two listings. Earlier in this thread you mentioned already doing this but you disabled the OS installation of Flash (located C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_11_5_502_135.dll). But, the fixes I've found adviced to disable Chrome's internal Flash located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\23.0.1271.97\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll.

So maybe give that a try. If all else fails then I'd also go for reinstalling Chrome, like Angry Geek suggested. Chances are you run into Flash related problems again some day since you also have host-installed Flash.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I don't have any issues with chrome. I have avast but a custom install with most of it disabled. I believe I have uh file shield network shield and script shield..maybe another one I can't remember im not home right now.

Even if I have 6 flash videos playing at the same time I don't experience any slowness.

 

[DocGreen]

I didn't know that. I use Firefox and never encountered Chrome issues work-related. So I did some reading and found that Chrome's internal Flash doesn't always play well with the OS installation of Flash. And since you also use Firefox you probably also have an OS installation of Flash.

The thing I found was to open chrome://plugins/, expand details and if there are two listings. Earlier in this thread you mentioned already doing this but you disabled the OS installation of Flash (located C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_11_5_502_135.dll). But, the fixes I've found adviced to disable Chrome's internal Flash located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\23.0.1271.97\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll.

So maybe give that a try. If all else fails then I'd also go for reinstalling Chrome, like Angry Geek suggested. Chances are you run into Flash related problems again some day since you also have host-installed Flash.

Good call! I'll give that a shot!

I don't have any issues with chrome. I have avast but a custom install with most of it disabled. I believe I have uh file shield network shield and script shield..maybe another one I can't remember im not home right now.

Even if I have 6 flash videos playing at the same time I don't experience any slowness.

I have all the shields enabled (although I generally don't install the behavior shield because it tends to interfere with things too often... not sure why it's installed on this netbook). But even with AV completely disabled I had the issue.

 

[DocGreen]

I didn't know that. I use Firefox and never encountered Chrome issues work-related. So I did some reading and found that Chrome's internal Flash doesn't always play well with the OS installation of Flash. And since you also use Firefox you probably also have an OS installation of Flash.

The thing I found was to open chrome://plugins/, expand details and if there are two listings. Earlier in this thread you mentioned already doing this but you disabled the OS installation of Flash (located C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32_11_5_502_135.dll). But, the fixes I've found adviced to disable Chrome's internal Flash located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\23.0.1271.97\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll.

So maybe give that a try. If all else fails then I'd also go for reinstalling Chrome, like Angry Geek suggested. Chances are you run into Flash related problems again some day since you also have host-installed Flash.

We have a winner!

Absolutely zero problems using the method you described. Even went as far as to play 4 720p Youtube videos simultaneously with Facebook in the background... no problems whatsoever. (Wouldn't want to open more than that though... this is just a netbook with like 2G of ram, lol.)

Thanks for the stellar tip! +1

 

[PC Ops]

Glad I could help Doc
Learned a thing about Chrome myself in the process so we have a win-win situation here