Issue with Gmail freezing and locking my whole system up
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This is not an earnest troubleshooting attempt, as I cannot predict when the problem will occur and am unwilling to just run Vivaldi with none of my usual extensions and/or in a fresh profile for what could be hours or even days. I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or if it's related to some of the other topics I'm seeing. This does NOT involve Vivaldi mail; I have that enabled, but entirely so I can get system notifications when a new email rolls in.
The problem: Sometimes, when attempting to delete an email in Gmail, OR attempting to close the Gmail tab, Vivaldi will freeze, and my system is effectively locked up. If it's deleting, nothing happens, and if I'm trying to close the tab, it will disappear but then reopen a split second later before freezing. I can alt-tab or try and open the Start menu, but it flips right back to frozen Vivaldi immediately, so I can't even get to Task Manager to kill Vivaldi. This most recent time, I was able to right click on the taskbar and select anything from that menu, but it never seemed to open and Vivaldi grabbed focus again. I think one time it did break loose on its own after a while, but it's much faster to just force shutdown via the power button and restart. The fans rev up when this happens, also, which I assume means the CPU is extra stressed from whatever's going on. I'm on Windows 10, and the current Vivaldi version, though the issue has been going on for two or three months now.
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@somnomania said in Issue with Gmail freezing and locking my whole system up:
I assume means the CPU is extra stressed
Which GPU?
Which driver version? -
Intel UHD Graphics 630. My actual separate GPU is nVidia, but Vivaldi doesn't use that. My drivers are current.
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Staying on the driver track. Can you see what happens when you change the driver of your GPU to the Microsoft Basic Adapter? That is the quickest way to see if this is related to problem with a driver.
Also just to make sure nothing finnicky is happening on the OS side run the following commands from the command prompt started as administrator:
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checkdisk. Do this by running
chkdsk /f -
system file checker. Run
sfc/scannow -
DISM. Run
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth. When it finds the installation needs to be fixed runDISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
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I don't know how to do that, and the internet was being unhelpful for explaining, since it seems most people want to do the reverse. None of the command prompt scans found anything amiss.
I did have a thought that perhaps the issue was connected to the popup Gmail does if you try to navigate away while it's still working on something, e.g. if you delete a message and then immediately try to close the tab. But I tested it and couldn't make the problem happen.
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To install the Microsoft Basic DisplayAdapter go to Device Manager. Select your graphics adapter --> click right --> Update driver.
Then a new window opens and choose Browse my computer for drivers --> choose Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer --> choose Microsoft Basic Display Adapter --> click Next. That will activate the driver.
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Done, but I hate it; Night Light isn't working, and I can't adjust the brightness at all, plus I had two taskbars until it restarted a second time, and it had reset the system to 125% zoom from my usual 100%. That last was fixable, obviously, but I don't know if I'll be able to stand the rest for the several days I might have to wait to see if the issue with Vivaldi freezing happens again.
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That is less endearing about switching to the basic driver.
Another angle may be to disable Hardware acceleration in Vivaldi Settings --> Web pages. You will have to restart Vivaldi after changing the settings I think.
I pivoted towards changing to the basic driver because it seems to affect the system at large.
Can you also check the Windows logs in Event viewer and see if there is anything being flagged there?
But staying closer to the browser. Try using gmail webmail in a guest profile. This will help to determine whether a broken profile is causing the issue.
