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Entry tags:
Computer troubles
Some time yesterday I was trying to respond to something on Dreamwidth or Quora or something, writing my reply in one of these text-block fields of a Web form, and Chrome suddenly reloaded the window, losing what I had already typed. I was only a sentence or two in, so I typed it again, being very careful not to hit any weird keychords (pretzel-shift-option-caps-lock-escape-left-square-bracket), and it reloaded the window again, losing what I had already typed. I started typing again, and only got through a few words before it reloaded. The fourth time I didn't manage to type anything before it closed the window entirely.
I thought the problem might be an interaction with a video game in another window, so I closed the video game and re-started Chrome. It asked whether to restore the same windows, and I decided to try "yes", in case shutting down the game was enough to solve the problem, but it wasn't: same symptoms. So I re-started Chrome and answered "no", then typed a URL, and it loaded, but after a few seconds the window closed spontaneously.
OK, I know this drill. Next step is to save everything in open document windows, shut down all apps, and restart the computer. So I did that, re-started Chrome, answering "no" to restoring windows, and got the same symptom.
Admittedly, this is an old version of Chrome, but we've been using it without difficulty for a year, and we haven't recently installed or upgraded any other software. It's the latest Chrome version that runs on Catalina 10.15, which is the latest OS version that runs on this hardware. Other than that, the computer has been serving us well for many years, and I'd sorta rather not upgrade to a newer OS because this one still runs Finale, which has been deprecated and no longer runs at all on the latest MacOS. (The Finale people recommend that their users migrate to Dorico, an even-more-powerful music-notation package, but it has a lot of different metaphors to learn, and many of the things my fingers knew how to do in Finale without conscious thought seem remarkably complicated in Dorico. And we still have hundreds of data files in Finale format. But that's a different rant.)
Opened Safari to see whether it had the same problem, and it seemed to be working fine. In particular, I did a Google search on "Chrome browser crashing after a few seconds", and got the advice I had already followed -- shut down other tabs, restart Chrome, don't restore windows, restart the computer -- followed by the next logical step: uninstall and reinstall Chrome. So I did that, restarted the browser, and got the same symptom: it couldn't keep one window open for more than a few seconds, even an empty window pointing at no URL at all. The advice also recommended deleting everything in "~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome", so I did that, restarted (the newly installed) Chrome, it asked me some unfamiliar questions because it no longer had any saved state, I opened a URL or two, and the windows kept closing of their own accord.
So I went back to Safari, had a chat with a Google support chatbot which told me to do all the things I had just done, and tried to post my question on the tech-support bulletin board. This required logging in, without the benefit of Chrome's user-and-password autofill, so I had to look up which username and password I had used on the Google support site before, but I managed that. In describing the question, there was some detail of symptoms that I wanted to check, so I opened Chrome again to see when and how it went wrong... and it didn't. It worked fine, for minutes on end. I went to bed, woke up this morning, and am typing this in a Chrome window without difficulty. Go figure.
I thought the problem might be an interaction with a video game in another window, so I closed the video game and re-started Chrome. It asked whether to restore the same windows, and I decided to try "yes", in case shutting down the game was enough to solve the problem, but it wasn't: same symptoms. So I re-started Chrome and answered "no", then typed a URL, and it loaded, but after a few seconds the window closed spontaneously.
OK, I know this drill. Next step is to save everything in open document windows, shut down all apps, and restart the computer. So I did that, re-started Chrome, answering "no" to restoring windows, and got the same symptom.
Admittedly, this is an old version of Chrome, but we've been using it without difficulty for a year, and we haven't recently installed or upgraded any other software. It's the latest Chrome version that runs on Catalina 10.15, which is the latest OS version that runs on this hardware. Other than that, the computer has been serving us well for many years, and I'd sorta rather not upgrade to a newer OS because this one still runs Finale, which has been deprecated and no longer runs at all on the latest MacOS. (The Finale people recommend that their users migrate to Dorico, an even-more-powerful music-notation package, but it has a lot of different metaphors to learn, and many of the things my fingers knew how to do in Finale without conscious thought seem remarkably complicated in Dorico. And we still have hundreds of data files in Finale format. But that's a different rant.)
Opened Safari to see whether it had the same problem, and it seemed to be working fine. In particular, I did a Google search on "Chrome browser crashing after a few seconds", and got the advice I had already followed -- shut down other tabs, restart Chrome, don't restore windows, restart the computer -- followed by the next logical step: uninstall and reinstall Chrome. So I did that, restarted the browser, and got the same symptom: it couldn't keep one window open for more than a few seconds, even an empty window pointing at no URL at all. The advice also recommended deleting everything in "~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome", so I did that, restarted (the newly installed) Chrome, it asked me some unfamiliar questions because it no longer had any saved state, I opened a URL or two, and the windows kept closing of their own accord.
So I went back to Safari, had a chat with a Google support chatbot which told me to do all the things I had just done, and tried to post my question on the tech-support bulletin board. This required logging in, without the benefit of Chrome's user-and-password autofill, so I had to look up which username and password I had used on the Google support site before, but I managed that. In describing the question, there was some detail of symptoms that I wanted to check, so I opened Chrome again to see when and how it went wrong... and it didn't. It worked fine, for minutes on end. I went to bed, woke up this morning, and am typing this in a Chrome window without difficulty. Go figure.