Frustrating!! Why do all my laptops freeze when opening 7 or more pages?

Hi:

Hey guys, can anyone explain why all my laptops that I own freeze and slow down when I open more than 5 pages at a time. I would think that an i3 with 4GB ram would be sufficient, and I don't game at all, I just open many webpages at a time, but it will start freezing for a few seconds and is annoying as heck (will generally freeze when I open 7 or more webpages- nothing heavy). I thought getting an i3 processor would help, but not at all. An for those wondering, no I am not using IE, if I did, it would freeze after opening 2 pages. I use firefox. If I go onto hulu or youtube with 5 or more pages open, it become choppy nation. Any advice would be appreciated. Would more ram do the trick?
Thanks.

Obviously it either a software related issue or a driver related issue or maybe a operating system related issue or even could be a heat related issue, but then again it might be a hardware issue or possibly a serious issue with Windows or even just a hardware failure. Glad I was able to narrow it down for you.

Quote from dealornodeal : Hi: Hey guys, can anyone explain why all my laptops that I own freeze and slow down when I open more than 5 pages at a time. I would think that an i3 with 4GB ram would be sufficient, and I don't game at all, I just open many webpages at a time, but it will start freezing for a few seconds and is annoying as heck (will generally freeze when I open 7 or more webpages- nothing heavy). I thought getting an i3 processor would help, but not at all. An for those wondering, no I am not using IE, if I did, it would freeze after opening 2 pages. I use firefox. If I go onto hulu or youtube with 5 or more pages open, it become choppy nation. Any advice would be appreciated. Would more ram do the trick? Thanks.

Well duh, youtube uses flash which is a known PoS. Not to mention you're loading up 5 or more pages of flash videos which would probably bring any system to its knees. See if it's pegging your CPU or RAM in the task manager and that will tell you where the bottle neck is. However, IMO this is a OE, operator error, problem not a hardware problem. Stop opening so many flash video pages at once.

Youtube is eventually moving to html5 instead of flash, like just about everyone else in the world. It appears they might have an opt-in program to use HTML5, www.youtube.com/html5/. I can't access that page here, but give it a shot, see if it works at improving your performance.

The answers can only be as precise as the info given and we may need more precise descriptions of "freeze".
For instance, does the page stop loading? Does a stream stop playing? Does your cursor stop moving? Does the entire computer come to a stop? How long does it last? How do you get out of it.
All that stuff and what I don't know about yet, will lead to you getting the correct cure for your problem.
It is fairly clear that it is not a hardware problem, and no, more ram is not the solution.

When you say

Quote : If I go onto hulu or youtube with 5 or more pages open

do you mean that 5 other pages are streaming video, or are they just internet websites?
What is the speed of your internet and have you tested it lately?
Do you know how to make a screenshot? If so, you could make screenshots of all the processes running in your task manager, after the next time it freezes up on you, post them here and the solution shouldn't be far behind.

Rocky is right. I would also take some snapshots on resource monitor (in task manager) that shows the cpu/memory/disk utilization before and during the 5-hulu-youtube webapges process as well as getting temperature readings from tools like speedfan or coretemp.

Since it happens to all laptops I assume it's software related since chances for faulty hardware on multiple machines is slim. I would check the antivirus software, browser add-ons, and any running programs at background across all machines around the time when the problem occurs and see what those machines have in common.

Also what's the network speed do you have for Internet connection? If it's not fast enough it could explain why "I use firefox. If I go onto hulu or youtube with 5 or more pages open, it become choppy nation" happened.

Quote from Count_Chocula : Obviously it either a software related issue or a driver related issue or maybe a operating system related issue or even could be a heat related issue, but then again it might be a hardware issue or possibly a serious issue with Windows or even just a hardware failure. Glad I was able to narrow it down for you.

Obviously!

Get FlashBlock. Don't actually start the Flash until you're ready to watch/play it.

i use Opera browser, it will keep the whole video on ram, background pages will write into hard drive(swap file) even when there are still more than 1gb ram free. slow when switch tabs(maybe similar to when OP said freeze)

now i use youtubedownloaderhd to download anything i am sure will watch the whole video, then open them with a media player.

any random video i am not sure i will just watch few seconds or the whole thing, i will use browser

never used hulu

Just for shits and giggles I opened 3 youtube pages on my desktop. It's not a beast in the processor department but it's a decent X2 Black Edition with 16GB of RAM and a plenty powerful GPU. Needless to say, flash basically caused the CPU to be pegged to max, both cores and it slowed my system down a lot. I'll tell you right now, nothing has slowed my system down like that. To prove how much flash sucks I joined the html5 beta program and guess what, very little lag with three pages open. There was a slight amount, but nowhere near to the lag I was experiencing with flash. It could basically play all three videos at the same time on HTML5.

There's a good chance that you are not having an issue with our computer at all. I would be interested in knowing what kind of internet service you have. Is it DSL, cable, etc.? Also, are you using wireless or is our comuter hardwired into your router? If wireless, is it N or b/g, is our router n also? Theres definately some things related to a network connection that will cause the issues you are reporting.

Quote from Dcjstur : There's a good chance that you are not having an issue with our computer at all. I would be interested in knowing what kind of internet service you have. Is it DSL, cable, etc.? Also, are you using wireless or is our comuter hardwired into your router? If wireless, is it N or b/g, is our router n also? Theres definately some things related to a network connection that will cause the issues you are reporting.

That's what I think too.
If the OP got back to us with an accurate description of how it all happens, we might be able to determine the exact reason for his problem.