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I recently change a setting in my chrome browser (latest version 39.0.x.x) and I noticed a strange side effect:

The setting I changed was the "Use hardware acceleration when available" and it was faster than before as my hard disk was always swapping before I check this option.

Unfortunately I noticed something wrong when I put my computer in sleep mode: every time the computer was waking up, the chrome browser was in a strange state: "not responding" and the open windows very small on the top left side of my screen. I tried to let it to recover for 10 min but it was not restoring properly, the only way to fix that was to kill the parent process (Have to guess which chrome.exe from task manager) and restarting the browser.

This behavior was always happening after a start from a sleep mode; I did not try to shutdown the machine as I prefer to keep my programs open.

Un-checking this option did fix the problem but the hard disk continue to hangs now for a while when I am using chrome (and vm-ware player as well).

Is this behavior normal when using that feature or it is my computer which needs a refresh of Windows?

Update: My computer partial configuration: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Dell Latitude E6420 with core i7 and NVIDIA NVS 4200 + Intel built-in. All drivers up-to-date (from Dell update tool and Windows), latest release date around 2013.

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  • What specific model of Latitude?
    – allquixotic
    Jan 13, 2015 at 19:19
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    The laptop they gave me at work is the exact same model as yours (minus the nVidia video card). It DOES NOT have this problem. I installed everything fresh when they gave it to me a few months ago. 2013 drivers for an i7 machine are very old. Update them, it'll probably fix your issues.
    – krowe2
    Jan 13, 2015 at 21:11

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No, the behavior is not normal. There is a 99.9% chance that it is due to your use of a buggy graphics driver.

The "Use hardware acceleration when available" option determines whether or not to use the GPU to speed up the rendering of webpages. With the option unchecked, webpages are rendered on the CPU, which is less efficient at performing graphics operations than the GPU.

Unfortunately, you didn't give any details about what kind of hardware you're running on, the version of Windows, the release date of your installed graphics driver, etc. so it is impossible for me to make any detailed analysis. However, this is most likely due to you using an outdated graphics driver.

Depending on your GPU manufacturer and/or laptop manufacturer, there may be a newer driver available that fixes the issue. Or perhaps there isn't, and you just have to live with the behavior you see now (this would be the case if you have a very old system, or if you have a graphics card that is designed in a way that depends on the laptop manufacturer to update it, which many vendors are notorious for not doing). Cynically, I'm willing to bet that there is a good chance you are using a very outdated GPU, with no updated graphics driver, and the only way to fix this problem in that situation is to either run GNU/Linux instead of Windows, or buy a new computer.

In the future, whenever you ask a question of this nature, always give as much detail as you possibly can about your computer hardware and software.

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  • Thanks for you answer but it looks the problem is probably somewhere else. I have two gfx controller and there is a Nvidia tools where I can choose which controller to use for a specific program. It was set on intel (built-in) and I changed it to NVidia, but the effect remains the same whatever the controller I use. This make me doubting about a driver error as I tried two controllers with two different drivers.
    – рüффп
    Jan 13, 2015 at 18:58
  • Your desktop is still fundamentally controlled by the Intel driver, including the process of setting up direct rendering. Don't assume that just because you tried to render that specific program with two different drivers, that the problem doesn't lie elsewhere in the compositing stack. Long story short, the graphics stack is complicated; this option in Chrome affects only the graphics rendering pipeline of Chrome; therefore, the graphics stack must be the problem.
    – allquixotic
    Jan 13, 2015 at 19:15
  • Ok thanks again for your answer, i found more recent drivers on the nvidia site, and applied it. I guess I also have to check the Intel drivers as well...
    – рüффп
    Jan 14, 2015 at 9:14
  • when you say: "In the future, whenever you ask a question of this nature, always give as much detail as you possibly can about your computer hardware and software." I would say you can always ask me to update the question as I did not know it was related to the gfx part. What would look the question if I put 100 lines of configuration where 90% are useless. Using comments for asking more details is a better way I think because more focused on the problem.
    – рüффп
    Jan 14, 2015 at 14:35

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