Sunday, June 5, 2011

The Google Chrome problem

At some point in time i started to like Google Chrome, the browser.....

Yeah, those where the times!

But let's start at the beginning.

Soon after Google announced it's first Chrome release i jumped onto it. After all, if they can do such a good job on search technology or email they should also be able to come up with a great tool to browse the www.

Once installed i started using it - well, after about the fourth click the good old good old crashed down like a badly hit WW 1 fighter plane.

There where some other things i did not like about the initial release, so i uninstalled the unfortunate thing.

A good long while later i got back to Google Chrome.
It was during a period of time i tested out all browsers because my former favorite, SeaMonkey 1 went to SeaMonkey 2 and did not make me happy anymore, so i needed a browser that was fast, would do what i want and would handle almost every website more or less equally well as IE or FF.

Opera was not really all that great, at least not good enough to replace FF.
The other minor browsers remained as such, minor, because they had nowhere any advantage point over the most common browsers.

So, i kind of had no choice to install Chrome again.
And, see there, no crashing anymore at this stage of the Chrome development, and i especially liked the way the tabs where shown, on top of the location bar, rather than added on below it, and of course, the overall lean and small top bar all together, giving me some bit more of a view of the websites i open.

So i ran with it for a good while - until one fine day.....
I had many tabs open, maybe 20 or more, it crashed or slowed down to almost a standstill as it usually did when there where plenty of tabs open.


Only, this time things went from bad to worse, Chrome had stalled completely, and my lappy started to act very sick.
Once i had it turned off it rebooted with some awful sounds - and Windows did not come back to view again.
On to the computer store for the first time in my life.
Diagnosis: HD crash.

So, i got a new HD built in, but in my memory i connected Google Chrome with this crash, if rightfully or not i can not judge as i am not exactly a hard - or software expert.

Naturally i once again had to look around for the best possible browser besides of the Windows default one.
Glad to say that SeaMonkey has come around again and made it back as my default browser, but with FF i still had my minor issues, i kind of looked at it like some old lady......
So, i brought myself forward to once again install Google Chrome.

Nice to have a the second best choice browser, all though i could never stand the weird display of source code or especially not partial source code in Google Chrome, to much crap for people who might even know what of it is useful and what is just an overkill of details, but what the heck, i had SeaMonkey to deal with web design the way it's meant to be, and Chrome just for browsing around for some specific sites etc.

So, that should have settled the suspicion about there being something fundamentally wrong with Google's Chrome browser??

Yes it did - until another not so fine day just recently!
Not sure if my Windows XP Pro is by now a bit to outdated for glorious browsers like Chrome, but than again, such a major Corporation should be capable to make things work on all still commonly used OS, not just for the latest versions thereof??

What happened?
Well, same scenario, maybe 20 or so tabs open, and as always, Chrome starts to slow down, this time it completely stalled (froze) again, and so far this can happen with other browsers too, isn't it??
Sure, but once again, after i simply turned the computer off via the power button and rebooted it did not jump on as it normally should, Windows came on at least, but with some message like "Hard drive needs to be checked for inconsistencies..." (or so).
It was an automatic process of 3 steps, but in step 3 even this process stalled (rotated around the same position on an endless loop).

Kind of worry some, did not know if i should wait an eternity, but eventually decided to turn the pc off, again via the power button.
Restart - and again the same message, this time i realized that i can also skip it, so i did, and Windows came on again.
First thing i did now was removing the Google Chrome browser due to it's mysterious / notorious malicious behavior towards Windows or the HD (at least in my mind).

Cleaned out all the Registry entries as well, checked for any malware etc. than tried to reboot - same message from Windows again, this time i did let it run it's course, and see there, this time it did run properly and eventually fixed all issues it claimed to have found and that was the end of the story.

But, it did and does leave me wondering about Google Chrome on XP.
To me it seems that the risk of this odd and truly unpleasant behavior "under stress" is to great to just ignore and re-install Chrome again.

I also wonder if there have been others experiencing this or any similar behavior with Chrome??
If so, please use the commenting system below to post your experience, would be interesting to read for sure.