PC freezes, RAM drops, 100% disk activity

Help
#1

(Shouldn’t there be an issues/bugs forum for stuff like this?)

Since around Tues/Wed last week, if I leave the PC unattended for a while - say, an hour or more - and I return, click on the T212 tab:

  • RAM drops like a stone to as low as ~40MB, then;
  • RAM jumps back up to, say, 3GB;
  • the whole PC freezes;
  • disk activity light is on constantly.

It remains in this state for maybe ~5 minutes and then the screen goes black, before, after a few more minutes, the screen returns.

It’s happened around 5-7 times now. The last few times I’ve had the task manager open and can see, when the screen returns, there is 100% disk activity for around another 5 mins before it settles down and everything is normal again.

It’s almost as if when I click on the tab to view my shares, the interface is catching-up, refreshing prices etc, but remains in a run-on state.

In ordinary activity I’ve noticed when I click on the tab (especially recently), there is a maybe a 1 sec lag as the UI is updated with the latest prices and I’m wondering if it’s linked to that.

PC has 16GB RAM
Browser is running the Webkit/Blink engine.

#2

Is it Google Chrome Helper running the CPU into the ground when you check the disk activity in task manager?

#3

Thanks for the suggestion, I don’t see it in task manager; probably because I incorrectly said my browser is running the Chrome engine - it’s not, sorry for the confusion, post will be corrected.

Thanks again.

#4

This just happened to me again.

#5

What is eating the CPU according to the task manager. I’ve experienced this problem on other sites at times. Even YouTube. It’s usually due to graphical rendering.

#6

Hello, when you leave PC unattended for a while in Windows 10 it goes into “idle” mode and some services like “WSearch” (Windows Search) are activated in order for the system to cache, index etc search results within the environment. That’s very disk consuming and if you don’t have an SSD drive it can become annoying. When indexing etc finishes everything will be back to normal. If you can’t wait or don’t want to wait you can disable the “WSearch” service. The easier way is to open a PowerShell window and type: “Set-Service WSearch -StartupType Disabled” and also “net stop WSearch”. If you’re not comfortable with command like you can press the Start buttion and search “services” , click on “Services” app, find “Windows search” in the list, right click on it, Properties and change “Start up type” to “Disabled”.

#7

don’t have this on work laptop (friggin high end) or on my 7 year old personal one with a dual core i3 and 4gm ram. used it on Chrome, new Edge, Firefox and Opera. may be something else meddling with your browser?

#8

I’ve forgotten, next time it happens I’ll report back.

Graphical rendering I can understand. Sometimes (recently), when I click the tab the UI goes black for about 1-2 secs before it repaints. As I said, it’s only been happening since last week.

#9

Thanks, @palesths. I’m aware of this but I think if that was the case it would happen on other tabs, too, and also it would’ve happened prior to last week. Also, there is no high disk activity before I click the tab.

#10

If it was hardware issue it would happen on other tabs as well. You could always try with a different browser, if there’s no issue with different browser, you could reset your preferred browser to “Factory defaults”. If the problem is with T212 tab only you might wanna check your PC for any Malware/Keylogger etc…

1 Like
#11

Happened twice again yesterday evening. This time, when I was able, I captured this screenshot of the Task Manager, although I’m not sure how much it tells us.

TaskManager-2020-12-09 181243
TaskManager-2020-12-09 1812431016×166 11.9 KB

To be clear, this happens only when activating the tab containing the Trading212 web-page (desktop) after a period of inactivity (last evening it was around 40mins and an 1hr, respectively)

#12

Someone’s bitmining mate.

#14

It’s called a joke :cat:

#15

I just clicked the tab a moment ago and the page (not the screen) went blank (as if reloading), whilst maintaining its background colour, RAM plunged to 7MB(!), then a couple of seconds or so later, RAM surged back to normal and the page returned.

#16

Not sure what is affecting your PC but it’s not caused by the platform :man_shrugging:

As someone who regularly abuses their PC with browsers, if T212 was the source the operation killing your PC, task manager would be listing it as the browser and not a system operation.

#17

The image of the task manager, above, is the aftermath cleanup operation - I can’t screenshot it when everything is melting-down.

The platform is defo the trigger, though.

#18

It would be useful to install another browser - completely fresh, like Brave Browser - and retest.
Seems very strange indeed.

Jokes aside, I first thought it could be a crypto miner hiking your PC, as even the new ones now know to reduce RAM/CPU usage if you have the task manager open.

Just do that first as a test, that will then isolate it to either browser issue or not.

#19

malware can be set to trigger against anything. just because going to the tab with T212 sets it off, doesn’t make it the source of your problems.

#20

I’m going to raise it with the browser-makers tomorrow.

#21

It doesn’t rule it out though, either. But I haven’t got malware.