Really low FPS/very slow computer after tabbing out of WoW

[Nossaria-sargeras]

TLDR at bottom

Background: For the past like 5 years I have always had this same problem with WoW where if I would leave my computer on for long enough (~2+ days without a restart), the entire computer would slow down immensely to the point it would take 30 seconds to even open a tab on chrome, and switching between games/chrome/whatever would be very slow.

I had noticed this only happened if I played WoW and generally the problem stemmed from WoW since other games I could leave my computer on, open and close games and so on freely for a long time with no problems.

At first I thought it was settings being too high, maybe I can’t leave my computer on so I went on google and tried everything to find out how to fix it and what is causing the problem. There were a lot of threads with similar problems but no solutions (and more interestingly no definitive source of the problem).

Recently I saw a post that said WoW has big issues with chrome/internet browsers in general so I decided to test if this is true and now I am very sure that this is what is causing my issue. If I don’t tab out of wow at all it will run fine on any settings and any type of content but as soon as I tab out, it starts to get progressively worse, to the point that any application on my computer starts to grind to a halt.

TLDR: Now that I am pretty certain that tabbing out of WoW (especially to chrome) is causing not only WoW, but my entire computer to start to have really bad FPS and slow down, does anyone know a fix or anything I can do to help the situation? Literally the only thing I can do is not tab out of WoW which is inconvenient and if I do tab out, I need to restart my computer entirely to fix the “lag”, as closing WoW doesn’t actually help once its started.

[Jambrix]

Hey there,

This sounds like either there’s a problem with Chrome or maybe another program running in the background that is conflicting with the game somehow.

Make sure that both Windows and Google Chrome are updated to the latest version. Also try going into the Google Chrome settings and under Advanced disable hardware acceleration to see if that helps.

You could try rebooting using Selective Startup to see if shutting down everything else will help prevent it from happening, and then if it does hopefully you can narrow down what specifically is causing it on the system.

1. Press Windows Key+R.
2. Type msconfig and press Enter.
3. Select Selective startup and uncheck Load startup items.
4. Select the Services tab.
5. Check Hide all Microsoft services.
   *Note: Skipping this step may prevent your computer from rebooting correctly.
6. Click Disable all.
7. Click Apply then click OK.
8. Click Restart.