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How to Fix: Page Unresponsive [Kill Pages] Error in Chrome

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  • 7 min read

Did you encounter the Chrome error showing Page Unresponsiveness? In that case, it displays the option to Kill Page and Wait command buttons. Simple fixes you can use include clearing browsing data, disabling hardware acceleration from the settings page, disabling installed extensions, recreating Chrome Profile, and running the browser without a sandbox.

Google Chrome is one of the best browsers in the world and is loved by most users, but despite the countless efforts from the Google developer team, some issues persist, which are driving users nuts. One such popular error is Page Unresponsive Error in Chrome, where the webpage freezes, and there is nothing you can do.

This error appears instantly without any warning, and you can do nothing to avoid it. If you’re doing something important such as sending an important email, having online lectures, or doing internet banking, the page will freeze, and you will be stuck.

Thankfully there are a few ways to prevent it. For an instant fix, you may close some tabs and refresh to see if it works. If it doesn’t, we have more solutions to the Page Unresponsive Error in Chrome problem.

The best and the easy to-fix solution will be to refresh the page or restart the browser and try again. If these do not work, you can try to restart your PC and see if the error persists. Down below are more troubleshooting steps that will tackle the situation more effectively.

Clear Browsing Data

Browsing data comprises your browsing history, cache, images, and more. This data in large quantities can load on your CPU hardware, which may cause repetitive Page Unresponsive Errors in Chrome.

Here are the steps to clear browsing data on the Chrome browser:

  1. Launch the Chrome browser and navigate to History from the More vertical 3dots icon menu options.
    Google Chrome History Menu option
  2. Click on Clear browsing data from the left sidebar.
    Clear browsing data tab under History window in chromeIt will open a clear browsing data window in a new tab.
  3. Switch to the Advanced tab and select the preferred Time range from the drop-down.
  4. Select the checkbox against – Cache and image data.Clear Cache and Image Files data from Chrome
  5. Hit on the Clear data button.

This will remove outdated files and memory cache, causing the page to load slowly. Revisit the web page to check if the page is responsive.

Disable Hardware Acceleration

Hardware acceleration is a smart way of distributing webpage functions between CPU and GPU to maximize performance. But this is an experimental feature in Chrome and may not work in some scenarios, resulting in multiple error messages, including unresponsive page errors.

Here are the steps to disable hardware acceleration in Chrome:

  1. Open Chrome and navigate to Settings in the Morevertical 3dots icon menu.
    Google Chrome Settings Menu optionA new window with all settings & configuration pages will open.
  2. Search for hardware in the search panel, and you will see the option to configure – Use hardware acceleration when available.
  3. Toggle the button to turn off and disable the Hardware acceleration.
    Use hardware acceleration when available option in chrome
  4. Hit on Relaunch after disabling the Hardware acceleration.

After disabling the option, restart the Chrome browser for favorable outcomes. Check the web page to see if the page unresponsive is still appearing.

Disable Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions can help boost productivity and facilitate readily unavailable features to the browser. However, excessive extensions lead to excessive CPU and RAM usage, which in turn causes multiple error pages in Chrome.

I’m not asking you to disable all extensions you might have, but to disable the ones you don’t use frequently.

Here are the steps to disable Chrome extensions:

  1. Open the Chrome browser and go to the More vertical 3dots icon menu.
  2. Here navigate to the More Tools > Extensions option.
    Chrome Browser Extensions Tab under More ToolsIt will open a separate window with all the installed extensions.
  3. Disable the extension, which you don’t need regularly.
    Temporary Disable Google Chrome Extension

This will help in releasing the memory occupied by the browser extensions. Since Chrome is a RAM-hungry browser, disabling the extensions will help utilize the gained memory for processing the web page.

Recreate New Chrome Profile (Windows OS)

Chrome creates a personal profile for every user signed on to the service. If you’re the only user, all your details and configuration will be saved to the default folder.

Now a lot of details might lead to corrupt data at some point, which might cause several pages of unresponsive issues on Chrome. So to fix such a scenario, you must delete the default folder to recreate a new Chrome profile.

Here are the steps to recreate the Chrome profile:

  1. Open the Run dialogue box (press Win + R key).
  2. Enter %localappdata% query within the Run command.
    Run LocalAppData in Windows
  3. Within Local App Data, navigate to Google > Chrome > User Data.
    Here is the final path: \AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data
  4. Delete the Default folder from User Data.
    Delete Default Folder from Chrome AppData

This folder contains your configuration details. When you restart the Chrome browser, this folder will be automatically created with a fresh set of configurations, thus fixing the problem.

Run without Sandbox (Windows OS)

In the newer version of Windows, all software and programs run in their secure environment called a “Sandbox”. This sandbox assigns CPU resources, RAM, and other essential aspects accordingly. This creates a secure digital area where an app can perform its functions without potentially harming other system programs.

But in some cases, a few apps need to be run without Sandbox to consume and show better results.

Here are the steps to run Chrome without Sandbox:

  1. Find shortcuts to Chrome browser and open its Properties.
    Google Chrome Shortcut Link Properties option
  2. Under the Target, add -no-sandbox at the end of the path string.
  3. The string should look something like this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -no-sandbox
    Open Chrome Executable file in no sandbox mode
  4. Now restart your Chrome browser to check the unresponsive page error.

This sandbox will allocate extra memory and space for the chrome browser to perform its task efficiently. This should potentially eliminate the Page Unresponsive error in the future as well.

Bottom Line: Fix Chrome Page Unresponsive

Chrome errors are inevitable, and you are right to get a few of them even after trying all the fixes above. But the bright side is that Page Unresponsive Error in Chrome is not fatal as it can be fixed easily.

If the issue appears repetitively, then I recommend you upgrade the RAM or a hard disk to SSD. This will significantly improve overall performance.

Let us know which method has helped you resolve the Unresponsive Kill Pages error in the Chrome browser.

Lastly, if you've any thoughts on How to Fix: Page Unresponsive [Kill Pages] Error in Chrome, then feel free to drop in below comment box.

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3 thoughts on “How to Fix: Page Unresponsive [Kill Pages] Error in Chrome”

  1. None of the above fixes explain why Chrome on a five year old quadcore at 1300 MHz goes to ‘page unresponsive’ when asked to load a minimal test webpage of < 0.2 MB. Even the banner image in it is highly compressed to take less than a tenth of a second to go through a 10Mb/s old download connection, yet a minute later the browser is still hanging around with 'page unresponsive'.

    I suspect that the request from the browser to the DNS (domain name server) got 'lost in the post' because mousing to the right end of the typed webpage address bar in the browser window and hitting enter gets instant page load.

    One might expect that a 'suspected lost DNS query' detected as 'page unresponsive' should be built into the browser to try resending the web page request once before annoying the user with a stupid timewaster notice.

    1. The Chrome browser is heavy on the system resources and if we use the extensions, then totally burnout the machine. Perhaps the 1300MHz is not able to give the required juice to render even the lightest of light pages.

      Even I have an old Dell PC running with Core i3 at 1700MHz, the results were the same as yours until I upgraded from HDD to SSD. It’s better now but still stuck at times.

  2. Is anyone else experiencing rapidly rising rates of Unresponsive Chrome pages over the last 2 weeks, and could that be due to the new Chrome 100 update? And if it is the reason, are there any recommended hints for solutions or work-arounds?
    Thanks –

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