I am writing this in Chrome on my old Win 7 HP laptop. There are no problems there. Microsoft should have just ended with Win 7, their only working OS. This is a big old … (read more)
I am writing this in Chrome on my old Win 7 HP laptop. There are no problems there. Microsoft should have just ended with Win 7, their only working OS. This is a big old laptop, heavy with a 17" screen, fragile, nonworking touchpad and with dying battery. For traveling I actually use a newer laptop - Dell XPS 13, light, sturdy, bright screen, long life battery, tiny... That came with Windows 10 initially and upgraded to Windows 11 later. I used Chrome for browsing initially just like on this laptop. At some point (I don't know whether this happened after Win 11 upgrade, I just didn't pay close intention to what Windows are doing behind my back) I just could not log on to Facebook in Chrome on Dell. Nobody is out there to help. Neither at FB, nor at Google, neither at Microsoft. Everything else worked fine. Before my travel to Europe this summer, I uninstalled Chrome and installed Firefox instead on the Dell. I carried over all my Google passwords. And everything worked fine, including Facebook. The trip to Europe went fine. Firefox performed great. Now a week back in the States, suddenly yesterday morning, out of the blue, without me doing anything to cause that (the day before I shut the lid, and everything worked fine), all hell breaks lose: I can't open a single page in Firefox - yet my WiFi connection is fine, and other devices work fine. Firefox opens the home page but nothing else, when I click on troubleshoot, my WiFi connection is suddenly dropped and I have to reconnect. I don't have Chrome on Dell, but I do have Edge, so I checked Edge: Edge opens some pages immediately, some pages only after I ask it repeatedly, all much slower and more laborious then it should be. So, while it did not lose functionality altogether like Firefox, I would say it is also not operating properly. But Skype, email software, printer connection - they work fine. Some satanic force entered the computer overnight and destroyed browser functionality. And I reseted everything and rebooted and restarted and deleted cookies, all the usual crap they tell us to hide what is really going on (some screw up or intentional sabotage in the code). There are no proxies. Firewall on or off does not matter. List of Windows updated shows the last one on 8/14, and for 10 days there was no problems. I fiddled with command prompt: sfc/scannow says everything is ok, malwarebytes say computer is clean, Edge improved after netsh winsock reset, but Firefox did not, I sent a request for tech support to Dell, but this can't be a hardware issue, it is most probably some software security bullshit issue that happened behind my back and that now requires someone with PhD in programming to figure out and solve. I am totally exhausted and very unhappy with the situation.