STW It support – Drop in PC performance

I have a cheap, Beelink Mini PC, which I bought last year.

It used to zip along quite nicely, don’t use it for anything demanding.

Office, Chrome, bookkeeping software etc.

The last couple of days, Chrome has started running really slow, a definite lag when right clicking to open a new tab, a delay when refreshing a page etc.

There is no issue with internet speed. The hard drive is 500gb SSD and has about 200GB on it.

Has Chrome just got even more bloated? Or could there be something I could do to “tidy” things up?

I used to find that PCs got sluggish if there was an update waiting to be installed so the first thing to try was always to go to Windows update and make sure there was nothing waiting there

Anything else running slowly or just Chrome?

Been rebooted recently?

I reboot everyday.

Just seems to be chrome?

Backup all your passwords/bookmarks etc and do a clean reinstall of Chrome?

Can’t hurt (apart from being a bit of a pain) and is very likely to help.

@leffeboy – Just downloaded and installed an update, after the restart Chrome is a lot better.

Not sure how long it will last?

Not sure how long it will last?

They usually come on the second Tuesday of every month so I tend to check the middle of each month to see if anything is stuck.  You say you reboot each day but unless you are using ‘shut down’ from the start menu rather than just closing the lid or pressing the power button it might not be a full reboot so updates might not get fully installed until you do it manually like you just did

Look at the Performance tab on Task Manager see what (if anything) is maxing out.

This is with a Youtube playing in the background.

Doesn’t look like anything playing up?

Shut most of your 42 tabs?

Doesn’t look like anything playing up?

Agreed, assuming it was symptomatic when you took that screen capture nothing is jumping out at me. Chrome is high memory usage but not excessively so (mine’s about 1.5GB).

Shut most of your 42 tabs?

That’s processes, not tabs. Mine says (19) and I have way more than 19 tabs open. Probably more than 42, even. You’re right though, that’s a lot of processes.

Chrome should start unloading inactive tabs to save RAM, though that does seem to be hit and miss so is maybe site-dependent (it works with STW). Oh – wait, that’ll be it won’t it, it’s a process per active tab. Which would imply that the OP hasn’t got 42 tabs open, he’s got more!

Grab a screenshot of task manager if it occurs again (and sort by CPU% by clicking it on the headers).

A common cause of these symptoms is the .net optimisation service running after an update has been installed in the background.  On a slower CPU that can take effing forever, and AFAIK you just have to let it run its course.

… either that or it’s some extension playing silly buggers perhaps. What’s it like in Incognito mode?

I’ve heard that Windows PCs get ‘gummed up’ with outdated software, clashing drivers, corrupt files etc which can slow things down. Very drastic solution but I have a friend who is into gaming and he reinstalls Windows once a year. Less drastic, you can do the following:

Disable fast boot in the power options setting.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht513773-how-to-enable-or-disable-fast-startup-on-windows-11

Restart, then;

1. Run Disk Cleanup
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/disk-cleanup-in-windows-8a96ff42-5751-39ad-23d6-434b4d5b9a68

2. Run System File Checker
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e

3. Run a full virus and malware scan using your preferred solution.

4. Delete any programmes you don’t use, especially ‘bloatware’ / crap that comes bundled with most PCs.

Make sure that it isn’t thermally throttling or getting too hot and then automatically reducing the power to the CPU in response

The CPU temp should be in the bios or you can grab a program like cpuZ and check it’s not in the 90’s whilst idling

If it is then a repaste /.clean out of fans etc should sort it