Troubleshoot Slow Google Service Across All Browsers on Windows 10

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One of the most annoying problems I’ve experienced lately is the slowness when access Google service with one of my Windows 10 PC. The slowness exists across all major browsers, with Chrome it is noticeable slower compare to say Edge. It is also exacerbated by the fact not only affecting Google search, services like Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Google Photos, etc. … are extremely slow when loading or during the initial access.

Some of the specific symptoms:

  • login to third party site via Google ID, the browser would hang and never pass the authentication page.
  • Gmail attachment would fail during upload and would take a long time to download any attachment.
  • Google Photos will not load additional photos past initial page position
  • Google drive not loading any documents
  • YouTube never loads any comments and would always hang when attempt to load home page from a current playing video

If you have the above symptoms with your PC, continue read on. To troubleshoot, first and foremost we have identified this is not a browser specific problem. That means we should shift our attention away from any browser-specific setting and focus on the system level instead. That said, we should ensure each browser’s setting are reset to default configurations and you have tried to run anti-malware or spyware scan tools with no luck.

Check DNS

With the above assumption, we can first check our network settings. We want to make sure our DNS settings are accurate. We have covered 4 tools you can use to change your DNS. Bottom line is, if the default setting “Obtain an IP address automatically” doesn’t work for you, you can always opt out for other DNS providers, such as Google’s 8.8.8.8 DNS.

To check your DNS, go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections. Select the connection that provides you the network, go to Properties. Select “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)”

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If the above step doesn’t have any affect read on and proceed to the next step.

Reset Internet Properties

Next, try reset Internet Properties. This will reset all your security levels to default settings, and wipe all trusted self-signed certificate and many other settings that a third party browser (ex. Chrome) might inherit settings from.

Go to Start Menu and search for “Internet Properties”, Advanced tab and “Reset …”

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Clean Hosts file

Next, we should pay a visit to the hosts file, make sure there are no associated domains that were overridden in the hosts file.

Go to

%windir%\System32\drivers\etc.

Open the hosts file with administrator privileges in a text editor, make sure all content are commented out.

Check Firewall

Next, check firewall configuration, we’ve covered this Windows Firewall Troubleshooter tool before that would automatically diagnose and reset your Firewall settings. If you know what to do with Firewall settings, you can feel free to use other Firewall managers to inspect any suspicious settings with your Firewall.

If Google services are still very slow at this point let’s proceed with other things you can do.

Check Windows Update

Next check Windows Update are all up to date, if not make sure you update all the patches. If your Windows 10 build is not up to date, perhaps time to get a latest Windows 10 build (assuming you are running a Windows 10 Insider preview build).

Check Windows Defender

By default in Windows 10, Windows Defender comes built-in. That’s Microsoft’s free antivirus solution. It’s great and does the job. However, if the security antivirus definition is out of the date you might be vulnerable to attack. So make sure all the security patch are up to date.

At this point, if things still don’t work well, you can try to disable Windows Defender protection. Yes, it’s not ideal and not recommended. However, this is the trick that resolved the Google service slowness across the board for me.

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After knowing that Windows Defender is the problem I’ve tried other antivirus to replace what it does. However after quite a long search with various antivirus software I’ve found nothing deliver the kind seamless experience Windows Defender offers. At this point, I’ve also noticed that you cannot really turn off the real-time protection. (at least not from the UI setting point of view, because the setting would automatically turn on a few hours later).

What you can do now is actually using Windows Defender to perform an offline scan, before doing so it is important to ensure all the security definition are up to date !

Bottom line re-install Windows 10

Worst comes to worst, with Windows 10, Microsoft has offered two quick way to reinstall Windows. One allows you to preserve everything, like literary everything. The other will essentially be a complete reinstall without any of third party apps installed.

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By now, hopefully, one of the steps above would help you to resolve the Google service slowness issue on your Windows 10 PC. If nothing above worked for you, please leave a comment below and we can help !

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