Author Topic: typing in web browser makes it freeze (Read 27,745 times)

nite_monkey · « **on:** September 11, 2013, 10:03 PM »

Im running windows 7 x64. I have ie10 and chrome 29.0.1547.66 m. Ive scanned my computer with mse and malwarebytes, neither found anything. Whenever I try to type anything into chrome's adress bar, or in a text box in chrome or ie, the browser will lock up, and I have to force close it. I can however type in ie's address bar without it locking up, but if I try to type in a text box on a webpage, it locks up. I figured, maybe it was my keyboard, so I unplugged it, and tryed using my drawing tablet with the onscreen keyboard. Same result. I dont have any other browsers, so I cant try them, but I can type in windows Explorer and notepad perfectly fine. Any idea what is causing this? (Ps. Typing all this on an android tablet takes forever)

Edit: upon further inspection, I have figured out that it isnt just text boxes, I just have to have the web browser the active window, and as soon as I hit anything on my keyboard, it locks up

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #1 on:** September 12, 2013, 12:04 AM »

Not sure, but I was having similar problems with FF a while back. It came and went as a problem with upgrades. How many versions of Chrome has this been true for?

lanux128 · « **Reply #2 on:** September 12, 2013, 01:03 AM »

try toggling 'hardware acceleration' within the browser, i'm not sure what it's called in Chrome.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #3 on:** September 12, 2013, 03:38 AM »

Ive been running this version of chrome for a little while now, and it just started happening. I looked under the chrome flags page for hardware aceleration, but I couldnt really find anything. I almost think it might not be chrome or ie, because when I tried to log into my origin account, it froze as soon as I typed one letter.

lanux128 · « **Reply #4 on:** September 12, 2013, 04:36 AM »

launch IE in safe mode and see if the problem goes away.. might be flash update gone hay-wire.

also check out your event log to see if there is any error events.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #5 on:** September 12, 2013, 05:43 AM »

I uninstalled flash because I read that was an issue for someone, and it still happened. I also ran ie with addons disabled (is that the same as safe mode?) And it still didnt work. I ran sfc because it was another recommended solution regarding the error apphangb1 which is what the error is that I get when chrome and ie crash. It found borked files, but couldnt fix them, and didnt run when I rebooted. I did however manage to get the problem to go away while in safemode (still having it while running windows normally tho)

lanux128 · « **Reply #6 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:01 AM »

yes, ie addons disabled = safe mode. when you said the problem went away in safe-mode, you meant rebooting windows in safe mode, right?

also did you find anything from the event viewer?

a bit far-fetched but you might want to try update your gfx drivers, just in case.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #7 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:17 AM »

Yeah, rebooted into safemode. The event viewer wasnt help at all, unless I was looking in the wrong spot. It only told me that chrome and ie stopped Interacting with windows and was closed. Updating my gfx drivers didnt do anything either.

lanux128 · « **Reply #8 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:38 AM »

since we're running up blind alleys, perhaps it's best to do a system restore and see if it helps.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #9 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:47 AM »

Im running sfc from my windows install disk, if it doesnt work, then im just going to goto bed and back up my steam files and reinstall windows tomorrow. Thanks for attempting to help me. I really appreciate it.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #10 on:** September 12, 2013, 11:53 AM »

Shot in the dark, but one thing that the two browsers do/might share regarding text box input is spellcheck. Try disabling it and see if that makes a difference. Especially if Chrome has its own and the two are fighting for control...of the (textbox) control.

app103 · « **Reply #11 on:** September 12, 2013, 12:40 PM »

You didn't mention how much RAM your machine has, or how many other apps you are running at the same time, especially background apps you might not even think about.

The reason why I am wondering this is because this is an issue I have experienced in ALL browsers on older or low end machines that don't have a lot of RAM, or when running too many apps or apps that eat a lot of memory at the same time, on newer machines.

Not only do browsers tend to freeze when there isn't enough RAM available, but if you are patient and wait till they unfreeze, the text you type into text boxes on web pages seems to lag quite badly, requiring you to sometimes wait a long time for it to catch up. It was especially bad on my old snail pc that has only 64MB RAM, where I could watch the chars I typed in the boxes appear one at a time, at a speed similar to an inexperienced hunt-and-peck typist. I had much better results typing what I wanted in Notepad and pasting it in when I was done. It was much faster than typing on the web page and then going to have a snack while I waited for it to catch up.

I have also noticed that the same thing has started happening more frequently over the last year, on my P4 with 1G RAM, especially in Chrome (and I only have 1 add-on installed in that, which is turned off by default, and only activated when I need it). In other browsers, it tends to happen most on pages that are quite heavy with javascript, or ones that have "endless scrolling" of content, like Facebook and G+. My solution was to open the posts I wanted to comment on in a new tab, rather than trying to type in the box on the same page that has tons of posts...and just never using Chrome, if I can avoid it.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #12 on:** September 12, 2013, 05:26 PM »

I guess it could be possible that I have to much junk running on my computerin the background. I tend to do that, wich is why I had to reinstall windows every couple of months on my old computer. My current computer has 8 gigs of ram

app103 · « **Reply #13 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:32 PM »

Quote from: nite_monkey on September 12, 2013, 05:26 PM

My current computer has 8 gigs of ram

You'd have to be running an insane amount of memory hogs for that to be your problem. I'm notorious for running a lot of stuff, but I have never run into this issue on my PC that has 2G RAM...only on machines with 1G or less.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #14 on:** September 12, 2013, 06:44 PM »

Im only using about 38% of my ram. Im guessing it is probably something else. Im done messing with it. Im backing up my stuff and reinstalling windows now

Shades · « **Reply #15 on:** September 13, 2013, 02:06 AM »

Sounds more and more like a DesktopHeap problem. Chrome opens quite a lot processes in the background, even when there is only a few sites/tabs open.

DesktopHeap is a tricky beast, and works on a very low level in Windows.

To my knowledge Windows 7 (x64) reserves 20MByte of RAM (per Windows account) to open windows in Windows. And once you hit that limit, no matter how much RAM you have in your PC, no program will open anymore and your computer becomes very (and I mean very!) slow.

At some point in time I tried out how much instances of Excel I could run simultaneously using Windows services on Windows XP. After maxing out the DesktopHeap values for that OS I maxed out at 8 and it took almost an hour to kill each Excel instance. It is frightening how much resources and handles Excel consumes when compared with other Windows applications or even with the other Office applications.

Take a look at this KB article from Microsoft if you want to know more about this.

For Windows XP/2003 (32-bit) Microsoft had a very rudimentary tool available. After a convoluted installation procedure it would show you where "all" that RAM went. XP has only 3MByte of DesktopHeap.

For 64-bit PC's you have to trust a blogger who adjusted the MS software so it works. You will find that link soon enough with Google, I purposely don't link to it.

Oh, before I forget, if you have a multi-core processor you will need to download and install Windows Symbols for Debugging (only 330MByte) to enable the DesktopHeap software to install an unsigned driver that it needs/uses to show you these values.

Which means that you have to reboot your PC and disable the signed driver check when the system is booting.

Anywayz, when you have successfully gone through all the hoops, this software does help in finding resource hogs, which does make it worthwhile.

Seriously, only do the above if you are up for it and really want to know, else don't even start.

nite_monkey · « **Reply #16 on:** September 13, 2013, 04:26 AM »

I don't know that the issue was caused by desktopheap. I had chrome closed, and just IE open, and when I tried to type something, ie would lock up. Just IE, I could still do anything else on the computer perfectly fine. I also later found out that if I tried to log into steam or the origin client, the same thing would happen. (both chrome and ie were closed when trying this.) I have no clue what the problem was, but I can't do anymore testing to attempt to fix it. I already used driveimage xml to restore my computer back to a clean install. everything works smoothly now. (other than a bug with the newest version of Logitech's gaming software which turns my keyboard and mouse (which isn't even a logitech mouse) into strobe lights)

Benkool · « **Reply #17 on:** October 25, 2013, 06:24 PM »

I have a laptop with the same issue. I think the freezing is caused by something effecting the root certificate of every browser. I'm not sure if it's malicious or software error. I tried installing other browsers like opera and it would have the same problem. What anti-virus did you run on that computer while you were having the problem?

wraith808 · « **Reply #18 on:** October 25, 2013, 06:44 PM »

I have the same thing sometimes. You might try to run Chrome's task manager. I have this from time to time, and I can trace it back to extensions- ad block plus has been a big offender.

Curt · « **Reply #19 on:** October 27, 2013, 11:26 PM »

java

modified:
Having just updated both Flash and Java, my Firefox 24 is now much more stable.