Help with chrome

[raymo]

All of a sudden, out of the blue, instead of a second or two to open IIS or
any other thing, such as Channel 9 News page, it now takes minutes.
To download a video was almost instantaneous, now even a 3 minute video
takes minutes to download. Even opening my email page takes minutes.
My shortcut to my email disappeared, and I found a way in on opening chrome, but now I can't even get chrome to open; this is getting worse by the minute.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

Hey raymo what is your operating system? (Eg win7, win8, win10, mac / Linux?)

[raymo]

Hi Russel . W10
raymo

[AdamJL]

Switch to Edge, mate. It’s a better version of Chrome and doesn’t run like a pig like Chrome does

Oh and run a virus check

[raymo]

Cheers Adam, I'll give that a GO.
raymo

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Edge is still based around Chromium IIRC, so if you want an independent data point, try Firefox as it’s not from the same code base.

You’d think after 30 years of web browsers you’d think we’d be able to make one that doesn’t totally suck

[raymo]

Things are only a little better using Edge, so I think I must have major problems.
raymo

[redbeard (Damien)]

Try clearing out the full cache, cookies etc as well as history.

Remove any add ins/extension

Check Windows startup folder for entries to remove, check the registry 'run' sections.

If no difference, re image.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Damien.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

I reckon you may have malware that could be hijacking your browser, when you get a chance look at your history back to when the problem arose and see which site you may have seen

Malwarebytes offer a 14 day free period you can use to clean out the system

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

It might be worth doing an internet speed test to see what sort of bandwidth you're getting up and down. Just check to see if you're getting decent speed out of your router / ethernet (or WiFi) port. I've seen similar issues in the past on my mum's laptop and the problem ended up being the ethernet port. Switching to Wifi could possibly be a solution if you're on CAT5; or switching to CAT5 instead of WiFi if you're currently using WiFi. Even if it's just for a test. You can always get a USB ethernet / WiFi replacement dongle if that turns out to be the problem.

[raymo]

Thanks Damien and Nikolas. I have no idea how to go about doing the things you suggested Damien, being not very comp savvy, but will try downloading
Malwarebytes Nikolas.
raymo

[raymo]

Hi Dean, I did a speed test yesterday, and it was a gnat's whisker below
the 50 that I'm paying for, so no apparent problem there.
raymo

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

hi raymo you could try this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHtZ9-9ch2w

[raymo]

Malwarebytes found nothing.

Sounds good Russel, but most everything on the video was beyond my abilities. The man on the video said the Tron thing was on a redit or some such thing. I have no idea what a redit is, or where to find one. Even the
downloading process required some copying and pasting, which I barely
know how to do.
raymo

[sil (Steve)]

Me I would check your chrome extensions, They often slow things down, especially when they’ve been disabled by the browser security and you probably have an extension or “helper “bar installed in the browser Google Chrome I’ve never ever liked, Plus Edge does things I dont want it to do (standard mo for Microsoft to know better than users how to use their computers) I switched long ago to Brave browser, has good security built in and no need to a million extensions, built on chrome source but stable and fast, its the only browser on my main machine, I killed off Edge and dont have Firefox anymore as it became too bloated and slow. Still I have good non standard security measure to repel trackers and malware too that you’re not likely to have so you’ve probably got infections. I hope you dont have ransomware which does slow the system down while it goes through encrypting stuff (process intensive) and sends the contents of your computer across the internet to someone else so lack of banwidth will slow your browser startup .

Check window update? It could be downloading a huge service pack or install package for Win11. M$ are *******s for forcing update downloads and install when it wants disregarding your settings choices, The slowdown sounds like a huge network traffic event, could be legit but could also be malicious. Task manager can show you if you have a lot of network traffic when you dont expect any, also check for processes begged at 100%. So many horrid possibiilities and you really should be checking every possibility. If you see a lot of network traffic but you dont expect any, check windows update, otherwise unplug physically from the internet, then take steps to scan your whole system for viruses and spyware etc. (on another clean computer you can download from PortableApps (virus and spyware scanners)install to thumbdrive and run them to at least grab latest updates for them then go scan slow machine fully, will take a long time, but if someone is encrypting your machine or downloading its contents is it more inconvenient to you they get information needed to access your bank account? Assume the worst mate unfortunately. Maybe the event viewer can help point direction but if youre network is being used or hammered thats something you need to isolate first, youre machine could have been infected long ago and made part of a zombie botnet waiting for c&c instructions. A big failing in people with regards to cyber security is they assume a virus is immediately obvious, but gone are the days when infections do stuff straight away,, these days they often open the door for installing and giving access to a Ton of other stuff. Could be mining cryptocurrencies for someone. Increasingly they just sit and have a couple of communication lines open for C&C to tell your machine what to do. These zombie botnets are more profitable for the attackers as they are a weapon to sell when needed, they arent always being used. So maybe someone bought botnet access to attack Russia or Ukraine and your computer is a part of whatever that attack is?
If I was in front of your computer i would:
1- check network activity
2- virus/malware scan system
3 install brave and uninstall chrome,
then maybe do some prevention measures and other investigations but by this point I’d working towards wiping the system and reinstalling from scratch because no matter what you think you’ve cleaned your are likely to have various infections and just Windows itself needs a reinstall every couple of years as it doesn’t clean up after itself and slow naturally anyway. In other words, take off and nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be certain.

[raymo]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply Steve.
Firstly, updates informed me that my comp is not suitable for W11, so I'm
guessing that it is not going to bother lumping my comp with data it can't use.
This all happened suddenly after years of being fine. I have roughly timed
chrome's operating speed, and it is approx 100x slower than normal, taking
about 90-100 secs to open any given app such as my email, or IIS.
As a temporary measure I have enabled Edge, which seems to be working,
slightly slower than chrome did, but perfectly acceptable. I am still using chrome at sub glacial pace for a few apps that have shortcuts on the chrome
page, that I don't know how to locate in Edge. Most of what you suggest is
beyond my capabilities; I think I might have to bite the bullet and take it to my local [expensive] guru.
raymo

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

One of my daughters ended up with a strange browser hack in chrome that was doing strange things a while back. Probably from accidentally going to the wrong website. Initially, we switched her over to another browser which was fine. Later we de-installed Chrome altogether. I lost track of it after that, but now Chrome is back on that laptop and working fine. I wonder if it's worth just trying to uninstall Chrome, and reinstall it from scratch. You'll probably lose bookmarks unless you export them first, but it might be worth a shot before you spend money. Chrome is useless to you as it stands anyway.

[raymo]

Thanks Dean. There is a number of shortcuts on my chrome page. One of
them is the only way that I know of getting into my email; the others don't
matter. I'm happy to try and delete chrome, but how would I then get into my email?
raymo

[AndyG (Andy)]

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3296214?hl=en

[sil (Steve)]

ia.acs.org.au/content/ia/article/2022/north-korea-targets-chrome-zero-day-exploit.html

Its nothing fixable by clearing cache provided the fault description is accurate. And just posting a clickable link is really dodgy, could be going anywhere. The link i posted without being clickable is so Raymo can search and find the article (released today) and find it himself and read it for himself.