When I launch Google Chrome on my desktop machine, it appears to spawn multiple (like 10 or 12) instances of it, along with a couple Command Line Window instances, quickly maxing out memory and crashing Chrome.

PC Specs:
Dell Inspiron
Windows 10 operating system
8gb of RAM
GEN 3 i5 Intel chip

Anyone have any idea what I could look for to try and resolve this issue?

When you restart Chrome after a crash, a dialog usually appears indicating Chrome did not close properly or something like that and it asks if you want to restore the pages.
Are you seeing that and selecting, yes?
Try selecting no.

Also, if you have any Chrome browser extensions, try disabling them.

How are you determining multiple instances of Chrome are running?
Are you looking at task manager or are there actually multiple browser windows open on the desktop?

quote:

Originally posted by Patrick-SP2022:
When you restart Chrome after a crash, a dialog usually appears indicating Chrome did not close properly or something like that and it asks if you want to restore the pages.
Are you seeing that and selecting, yes?
Try selecting no.

Yep, I tried that, but it still ended up in multiple occurrences of Chrome loading.

quote:

Also, if you have any Chrome browser extensions, try disabling them.

Have not tried that yet, but will. Though I don't think that will be the solution given the extensions I have installed are not new and have been installed forever.

quote:

How are you determining multiple instances of Chrome are running?
Are you looking at task manager or are there actually multiple browser windows open on the desktop?

Popped the Task Manager to check before a crash, and them after to kill off Chrome.

Something else I forgot to note in my initial post. I un-installed and then re-installed Chrome to see if that would help. It didn't.

Browsers spawn multiple instances for each process rather than each process as a new (hidden, if it is process(s) that are not actual pages you open)"tab" (under a single instance) so that if one process crashes, it does not close the instance (and all your open tabs).

And what Patrick says.

FWIW, I switched to Brave a couple years back, and am very happy with it and the ability to stop a great deal of ads and pop-up crap.

(It did not take long to get used to it).


Also, do not import anything, it will take a little more time to create bookmarks, and any auto-fill information, but you do not risk dragging any ChromePlatedCrap™ along (and all the cookies, and what not that Chrome drug in...)

Just an observation.
I am using MS Edge currently.
But I do have Chrome installed.
With no extensions enabled in Chrome, I dropped from about 18 instances in task manager to 9 instances.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
Browsers spawn multiple instances for each process rather than each process as a new (hidden, if it is process(s) that are not actual pages you open)"tab" (under a single instance) so that if one process crashes, it does not close the instance (and all your open tabs).

I just checked Task Manager on my Lenovo laptop. When running Chrome, Task Manager represents 'one' instance of Chrome loaded, even with multiple separate pages and a few extensions loaded, so I'm a bit confused by your comments.

Can you check the Chrome Task Manager (Chrome has its own TM separate from Win10)?

1. Click the 3 dots in the upper right corner of the window.
2. Click More Tools
3. Click Task Manager

See how many tabs are open. If it's a lot, you can close them down individually with End Process.

(This is a known issue with Chrome, and there may be other adjustments that need to be done, but this is the first step.)

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
Browsers spawn multiple instances for each process rather than each process as a new (hidden, if it is process(s) that are not actual pages you open)"tab" (under a single instance) so that if one process crashes, it does not close the instance (and all your open tabs).

I just checked Task Manager on my Lenovo laptop. When running Chrome, Task Manager represents 'one' instance of Chrome loaded, even with multiple separate pages and a few extensions loaded, so I'm a bit confused by your comments.

Did you click 'more details' at the bottom of task manager? If I have 'less details', I have 1 brave instance, if I click 'more details' I have 10+ for 6 tabs open.
Brave is basically open-source Chrome, so it behaves similarly. When I used Chrome, it wasn't unusual to have a metric shitton of instances in task manager.

Just reset the browser.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Just reset the browser.

Can you expand on that for me? I want to make sure I know 'exactly' what you're recommending.

 
You might want to try another (Chrome based) browser. I use Vivaldi and am very happy with it. I just checked, and it is using about 10 different processes, for a total of 1.3GB on a 16GB machine. That is with 5 tabs open.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Just reset the browser.

Can you expand on that for me? I want to make sure I know 'exactly' what you're recommending.

If I'm not mistaken he's suggesting you go to your browser's settings area and use the reset option. I don't have the same browser as you but it exists in Brave here:

Plenty of good info above, as usual. Chrome can also be opened in "safe mode" by holding down Ctl-Shift-n when opening in Windows (Cmd-Shift-n on Macs), this disables many things that can cause trouble. This is also known as Incognito Mode, used for anonymous browsing, pretty much does what Brave does by default.

When you open Task Manager, in the lower left corner do you see ^ Fewer Details or More Details.

If you elect to see More Details then you'll see Apps (#) where # represents the number of apps open, and Background processes (###) which are the processes the apps that are open are using.

I have Apps (7) and in that is 1 labeled Brave, if I select More Details I'll see the One App Brave (plus anything else running) and under Background there are additional listed Brave processes (8) and yet I have two brave tabs open in one window of Brave Browser.

Chrome acts the same way.

Hope you're resolving this, Big Deal. As Sigmonkey explained, this is happening because Chrome intentionally opens tabs and even extensions as separate processes so that one problematic tab doesn't have to take down the entire program. Unfortunately this makes Chrome a big resource hog.

You can try manually closing extraneous processes through Chrome's Task Manager (not Windows Task Manager).

Alternatively, you can actually reprogram Chrome to use a single process regardless of how many tabs are open. It's very simple, just adding a single command line. Check out Solution 1.