Thursday 15 November 2018

Fix for occasional 'freezing' in Chrome browser when editing web pages (Windows 10 64-bit)

I use the WebNode online page editor to the edit pages of the Easy2Boot site.

For a long time now I have experienced a problem of 'freezing' for between 5 - 200 seconds after the first few edits which is very annoying. If I wait long enough, the cursor 'comes back' and I can continue using the mouse and keyboard - during the 'freeze' period I can use other Windows tasks such as other browser panes or other apps, I just cannot continue editing in the browser page I was using. If I save the page and then re-open it for editing, the freezing seems to stop for a few minutes before it starts again.

I noticed that the CPU fan was spinning faster when this freezing occurred and so I used Task Manager to find out what was using the CPU. I noticed that when the freezing occurred, the CTFLoader task was using over 50% of CPU resources, but when the freezing stopped, CTFLoader went down to about 2%. I also found that by using right-click - End Task in Task Manager on CTFLoader, the freezing could be stopped and I could resume typing in that browser tab.

So CTFLoader seemed to be causing the issue. SFC /scannow showed no problems however.

Then I read a post on reddit here which described how to solve it by stopping the 'Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service'. Since my PC did not have a touch panel and I do not use handwriting input services on the PC, I disabled and stopped the Service.

Win+R > services.msc >  'Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service' service > right click > properties > click STOP and change Startup type to Disabled. Then click OK. A reboot is only necessary if you find keyboard input no longer works in some apps (e.g. Edge).

Now all is good. I still get occasional freezing, but it only lasts a few seconds now instead of minutes!

P.S. I am not sure if this is relevant, but I do have Office 2007 installed on my PC but the freezing occurs before I use any Office 2007 applications.

[UPDATE] Well the 'freezing' has not completely disappeared whilst using the webnode web editor, however I have found a simple fix - when it freezes,  I just need to select a different Chrome Browser tab and then re-select the webnode browser tab.

No comments:

Post a Comment