Windows 10: New laptop; Edge virtually useless

Posting in the hopes that someone has had a similar issue and has been able to sort it. I recently bought a laptop from MSI to serve as a desktop replacement. It mostly seems fine except one thing - Edge. I'm not sure whether it was malfunctioning from the start or whether one of the programs I've installed has wrecked it, but it's now not able to open PDFs or indeed any page with any significant level of Javascript or Flash. It tries to load the page, fails, tries again, then crashes out with the 'This page is having a problem' screen briefly visibly on-screen. If there's more than one tab, the tab closes. If it's the only tab, Edge crashes.

What's baffling is it's not all sites - Google, BBC news, etc. work fine. Speedtest.net crashes. MSN, hilariously, crashes. I've tried disabling Flash, clearing all the browsing, data, and switching off Kaspersky which I thought might be part of the issue.

I followed Brink's tutorial here to see if that would improve matters (I had to use Unlocker to delete the package file). It all reinstalled correctly, but then couldn't even open its own intro screen, instead crashing out, which makes me think it must have been working when it was first booted up.

Could the issue be that I'm using a Live account to sign in? I've never done this before and wonder if it's caused more issues than it solves. It also appears that I can't create other accounts to check if it's just mine; hopefully logging in with a normal account would fix this but am loathe to give up what seems to be working for a browser I most likely won't use.

* Candidates: Acrobat X Pro, Flash Pro, Kaspersky; VLC Player, removing WinZip and replacing it with 7Zip.





:)

 

Laptop rendered virtually useless overnight - Creators Update?

Are you sourcing your drivers from DELL ? With laptops it's generally best to use drivers provided by the

mfg of the machine.

Plants vs Zombies is significantly less system intensive than the other games, so using an appropriate driver

would be more critical with the other games.

"specific games that have inexplicably stopped working smoothly"

If it's only some games you should be able to repair them. If they are from Steam, run Steams

'verify integrity of game files' tool. I have to do this with several Steam games after every version update,

including SR 3&4. Origin has a repair tool as well. Not sure about UPlay.

- CCleaner... Using any registry cleaner, is not advised.

While the registry cleaner in CCleaner does not seem to dig too deep it could still cause problems,

and registry cleaners don't improve performance.

Modern Windows and systems can handle a 'bloated' registry just fine. If you know what you are deleting it's probably safe enough, but allowing it to delete stuff you don't know about could lead to problems.

"but am worried about losing my personal data and (almost more concerned) my game progress/data. "

You could loose your data at anytime, not just because of a corrupt update, or while doing reset/recovery/rollback. HDD\SSD's can fail without warning. As Murphy's Law indicates, this is more likely to happen

if you don't back up your data.

- At very least, keep a backup your full User folder to an external drive .

Games that have been downloaded from Steam, EA Origin, Ubisoft UPlay should also be backed up if

you don't want the pain of downloading them again.

While disk based games don't suck up your bandwidth when reinstalling it's still a pain in the keister

reinstalling if you have a lot of them.

Having a backup is so much easier to restore (as long as Windows is not reinstalled clean)

Steam keeps saves for most, but not all games, in the Steam\User data folder

Origin and UPlay have save folders in one of the Program folders on C:\ ( You have search each Program

folder because they are not consistent. Some games save in different locations to others, but they will be in

an Origin or UbiSoft folder. )

Many old games keep the saves in a sub-folder in the games install folder vs your

User\Documents or AppData folders where most disk based, and some downloaded games keep their saves.

- A lot of stuffing around, eh! The easiest option is to clone your C:\ drive to an external HDD.

If you have games, software or data on another partition\HDD you can simply copy them to an external HDD,

but C:\ should be cloned because of Windows.

Yes, adequate external HDD space cost, but what are your game installs and data worth to you ?

I don't trust these large version updates to install perfectly every time (haven't had one stuff up yet, but

the upgrade from Win7>10 did, and having a clone saved me a lot of grief redoing the upgrade ).

These version updates overwrite large portions of Windows, so always keep up on when the next version

update is due, and clone C:\ close to the day you select to do the update.

Best to select a day that suits you rather than wait for Windows updates to push it when you least expect it.

For cloning/migrating, I use AOEMI, but Macrium Reflect has more functions and is often recommended.

Both have a free version.

Free Partition Manager - AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard

btw - regarding HDD failure. Crystal Disk Info analyses a number of HDD/SSD parameters and shows a

yellow warning flag when something is starting to get flaky. It's a handy tool for keeping up on the health

of your HDD.

CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World

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Laptop rendered virtually useless overnight - Creators Update?

So virtually overnight my computer became incredibly slow, even making this post was tedious and lagging constantly. Internet takes forever, and all of my games are completely unplayable due to lag, even though they all played fine a week and a half ago.
I first noticed it on maybe the 13th, after moving, because my speakers started crackling which had never happened (that seemed to improve after updating my audio drivers) and its been downhill from there. I was worried that maybe it was a hardware issue that
I caused somehow during the move, but I don't know how or when that could have happened and there are no signs of physical damage. I discovered that it was trying to download the creators update so I thought that was using all of its processing power, but
now it's fully installed and my computer is slower than ever.

About my laptop:

Dell Inspiron 3558

Windows 10 Home version 1703

OS Build 15063.296

Processor: Intel(R) Core i3-5015U CPU @ 2.10 GHz

6.00 Gb installed RAM

System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Graphics: Intel(R) HD Graphics 5500

(let me know if any other information would be helpful)

I've tried everything I can think of - defragmented my drives, ran very diagnostic I could find, checked temperature, uninstalled old games, checked my start-up processes, updated my drivers. I already had various Google services and Cortana. I have a CC
cleaner that I run regularly.

Any ideas of what could be wrong or what I could do to speed up my system would be much appreciated.I was thinking about doing a reset or recovery but am worried about losing my personal data and (almost more concerned) my game progress/data. I just got
this computer last year so I feel like it shouldn't be pooping out on me yet).

The specific games that have inexplicably stopped working smoothly are: Dragon Age Inquisition, Sims 4, Saints Row 2 & 3. Plants vs. Zombies is the only game left installed that is still playable.

**Post moved by the moderator to the appropriate forum category.**

 

Which version of Windows 10 are you using? The most recent insider build has a known issue that Acrobat crashes.

 

I appear to be on 10240; guessing that might be the issue then, although it's not just PDFs.