For the past couple of months, whenever we load Google Chrome on this computer to start browsing the internet, it just hangs and hangs. The homepage will load instantly, but the first site you try to go to will just sit there grinding away for a good solid minute or two before it decides to move. Originally we thought maybe it was just the internet or the computer, but recently we think we discovered the real problem.
Yesterday, in the midst of trying to load our first site for the day, we got a bubble in the bottom right corner of the screen saying "Avast WebRep has crashed. Click this bubble to reload the extension." We did so, and everything moved along fine (including loading the pages) for about 30 seconds until it again hung up, froze, and gave us that bubble. We finally had to force Chrome to close, reloaded, went through the initial first-page hang, and Googled for some answers. We turned up a LOT of very similar problems with WebRep crashing or massively slowing down computers, which was pretty telling.
Today it went completely bonkers, crashing and having its icon completely disappear from beside the Chrome URL bar. Each time the icon went byebye, the browser picked right up and ran like a charm.
Since we only frequent sites we're VERY familiar with (we've had enough scares with malware and viruses for one life time), is it safe to turn the WebRep extension off in Chrome? I'd like to test and see if that really is what's causing these crazy problems.
Thanks in advance!