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Google Chrome´s rendering area is constantly freezing in my computer. Not the whole software, only it´s rendering area. Clicks are still working, mouse pointer still changes when hovering some link. Even if I click on a link it seems that it is loaded, the url changes and etc.

There are some sites that are suspect of having content that causes this behaviour. Coincidently (or not) they are javascript loaded sites:

  • Gmail
  • Google Docs

What I have already tried:

  • Disable all plugins
  • Reinstall Google Chrome

What makes it unfreeze:

  • Resize the entire window. It seems to me that for some reason Chrome stops refreshing until a resize happens.
  • Killing GPU process unfreezes all tabs.
  • In a new tab load one of the suspect sites

Relevant versions

  • Chrome Version 24.0.1312.52 m (but it was happening before update)
  • Windows 7

My questions

  • Any idea on what could cause this?
  • Is there any debugging level log that I could enable (GPU process only would be perfect) so I can see what has happened just before the freezing?
Ricardo
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  • More information is required. This actually sounds like a problem I had that turned out to be caused by a failing hdd. – Ramhound Jan 14 '13 at 13:18
  • Hi Ramhound, what kind of additional information should I provide? Thanks. – Ricardo Jan 14 '13 at 13:26
  • For instance you mention it crashed, more information about the crash, might be helpful. – Ramhound Jan 14 '13 at 13:49
  • Changed the word crashes for freezes and added more info on it. – Ricardo Jan 14 '13 at 13:51
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    Are you able to verify if Firefox present similar problems as Chrome? – Ramhound Jan 14 '13 at 14:04
  • Yes I tried it and it does not freeze at all in Firefox. Neither safari. And, believe me, not even IE. But I like chrome way too much to let it go easily :-) – Ricardo Jan 16 '13 at 12:07
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    Are there a Lot of Extension or Add-on ? Did you had a look at Task Manager in Chrome ? (While in Chrome Press `Shift`+`Esc`) try ending some of the processes in there, Does it help ? – Ankit Jan 17 '13 at 13:25
  • +1 @Lamb. With a tab frozen, in Chrome´s Task Manager I could see a GPU process consuming a lot of memory, wich raised my attention. Killing that process made it unfreeze, just like when resizing the window. Will add more info in the question. Thanks. – Ricardo Jan 18 '13 at 13:33
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    Is it possible it's flash/html5 video which is offloading to your GPU for processing? To test, does it freeze on text-only, no ads sites? – LuckySpoon Jan 18 '13 at 14:46
  • @LuckySpoon, I still can´t determine that. It is not flash for sure, it has frozen some times with flash completely disabled. I do notice it happening more frequently when gmail is opened. – Ricardo Jan 18 '13 at 15:55
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    Have you tried updating your video card drivers? – Natalie Adams Jan 18 '13 at 16:38
  • @NathanAdams Good idea, will try it and post the results as soon as possible. – Ricardo Jan 18 '13 at 18:43
  • I Think I have one to charge here... http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-catalyst/pages/catalyst.aspx – Ricardo Feb 05 '13 at 12:12
  • Was Unity Player plugin related for me.. – HaveAGuess Oct 02 '13 at 11:25

3 Answers3

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It is a bug of GPU acceleration. You can disable it in chrome command line. Add these parameters in chrome command line. --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer

user210189
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I had the exact same problem with the same symptoms. The fix on this page did it for me.

To summarise:

  1. Type in about:plugins into the address bar.
  2. Press the Details + button at the top right of the list.
  3. Find Adobe Flash Player on the list. There should be two files under that entry.
  4. For the entry under Chrome e.g found at C:\Users\(User)\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\....click Disable.
  5. Restart Google Chrome.

Although this worked for me, I can't be sure it will for you. I hope it does, give it a try.

Adam
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1

I too was having a similar problem with Chrome. I was able to fix it by stopping the following services.

  • McAfee HIPSCore Service
  • McAfee Host Intrusion Prevention Service

Once these services were stopped, chrome.exe was removed from Task Manager and then I was able to restart Chrome.

Here's the link to the Google Product Forums post.

I hope this helps someone else too!

JoeFletch
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